Director, Writer, and Horror LEGEND Brian Yuzna Interview: Reanimating the Dark Arts

WARNING: There are a few moments of loud dogs in the background that i could not lose and there is a short epilogue from Dr. Will Dodson at the end, as well. Hope you enjoy!

I was raised by Brian Yuzna... in a way. From terrifying giant ants in Honey I Shrunk the Kids to confirming my terrible fears with The Dentist, Yuzna has crafted some of the most lasting memories in my mind and this was mind-blowing to simply hang out with Brian for a bit.
That being said... Brian may even make a return soon... 
-
Buy The Physical Media Advocate (zine) on Amazon: 
https://l.linklyhq.com/l/1utJN
-
Become a patron here: https://www.patreon.com/DiscConnected
-
Disc-Connected: https://linktr.ee/discconnected
-
Someone's Favorite Productions: https://linktr.ee/someonesfavoriteproductions
-
Shelf Shock Rewind: https://linktr.ee/shelfshockrewind
-
Email: [e-mail]
--
Merch: https://www.teepublic.com/user/the-disc-connected
-
Podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/show/the-disc-connected
-
If you happen to be shopping on Amazon for something and would like to share some of Lord Bezos' profits with my channel at no additional cost to you, please consider shopping through my link: https://amzn.to/39mcX1t
-
Tip Jar: https://www.paypal.com/donate?hosted_button_id=TDEVSPJZ9EFCW
or
paypal.me/RVinls (friends and family only)
or 
Amazon wish list: https://www.amazon.com/hz/wishlist/ls/20CR2ZN456P1B?ref_=wl_share
-
Music is by Michael J. LeRose- [e-mail].
Outro is K(NO)W by Crusoe via a Creative Commons Attribution License and verbal/written permission from the artist.
-
Links above may be affiliate/promotional links that provide me a tiny commission to support the site and do not charge the consumer anything extra.


Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-disc-connected--6024210/support.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
You are now listening to the Someone's Favorite Productions podcast network.
At one point I had to make Olympics, so I
always had a job very politically incorrect back then.

Speaker 2 (00:15):
Hello there, and welcome back.

Speaker 1 (00:17):
What is this place? Is connected? Disconnected? It's connected, disconnected, disconnected, disconnected?

Speaker 3 (00:23):
Is connected disconnected, disconnected, disconnected, disconnected, disconnected, disconnected, disconnected.

Speaker 2 (00:29):
I'm starting to feel disconnected.

Speaker 4 (00:30):
Work the number that has been disconnected.

Speaker 2 (00:35):
Hello there, and welcome back to the Disconnected.

Speaker 5 (00:38):
I honestly don't even know how to introduce this because
I'm here with one of, in my opinion, the most
esteemed incredible contributors to the horror genre over the last
four at forty years. That's kind of crazy to say
out loud like that, mister Brian Usma, thank you so.

Speaker 2 (00:58):
Much for being a part of this.

Speaker 1 (01:00):
Nice to be here.

Speaker 5 (01:02):
I don't even know where to start. You've had a
hand in so many incredible things over the years, from
producing titles with massive pedigree like Dolls. I Love Dolls,
one of my favorites of all time, writing on things
like Honey, I Shrunk the Kids, and following that up
with one of the most disgusting shots put in film
and society.

Speaker 2 (01:21):
We all thank you for.

Speaker 1 (01:22):
It, well, thank you for enjoying them.

Speaker 5 (01:26):
So you have such an interesting and globe trotting, diverse
background that got you to the entertainment industry.

Speaker 2 (01:33):
How how do you feel you got here?

Speaker 5 (01:35):
What is the first handful of steps that really got
you to where you were established?

Speaker 1 (01:41):
You mean being able to make money making.

Speaker 5 (01:45):
Movies, even just getting two movies. I mean, you know,
growing up in other countries and then working as a
carpenter and all that.

Speaker 1 (01:52):
Well, growing up, I grew up there were movies. There
were movies everywhere, so I grew up. And then we
didn't have TV when I was a kid until I
was about seven or eight because they didn't have it
in Panama where I lived. But we went to the movies.
One of the first movies when I was very young

(02:14):
that I think I must have been six or something.
I think maybe even earlier. Maybe see anyway, we used
to go to the movies on Sunday, the Kiddy matinees,
Nice and I and I saw The Creature with the
Adam Brain and it just really you know, gave me

(02:38):
sleepless nights. Nice And then the next you know, fantastic movie,
genre movie. I remember, was the Seventh Voyage of Sindbad.

Speaker 2 (02:53):
Oh wow, that was you know.

Speaker 1 (02:56):
And the skeleton part really scared me, and the and
gave me nightmares. And then of course the woman turning
jumping into the urn with the snake and coming out
as the snake woman was very disturbing to me. I
didn't quite know eye. And then another big genre movie

(03:19):
that was very influential to me around that same era
when I was, you know, in grammar school, was The
Ten Commandments.

Speaker 2 (03:30):
Oh interesting, which.

Speaker 1 (03:31):
Was a which you would think that's you know, it's
a biblical epic, but it was made for all audiences,
you know, back then. But it had all this kind
of real genre stuff like rods that get turned into
snakes and turning the sea red blood and then this

(03:56):
green smoke going through the village killing killing children, and
the sea opening up and all this stuff. So like
a big genre movie. But then when Moses goes up
to abount Sinai, the all the israel Israelites worship this

(04:17):
golden calf and start having a big orgy. Now it was,
I guess g rated, but it was an orgy, you know,
and that really affected me. And when I did start
making movies. I would often try to figure out where

(04:38):
my default instincts came from, because I think anybody, everybody's
coming is coming from something. Most people that make movies,
even on the huge level, are trying originally or trying
to make movies they loved when they were kids, of course,

(04:58):
and I think that's why I have this propensity to
think that a good movie should end with a big,
crazy origin. Because of the Ten Commandments. That's how it ended, you.

Speaker 2 (05:13):
Know, well, thank God for that.

Speaker 1 (05:15):
It wasn't good. What they were doing was clearly not good,
but it was very satisfying. I mean, Moses comes down
and puts an end to it, so it's not like
it's a horror movie. It ends well, you know, so anyway,
and I did. I saw all the all the you know,

(05:38):
like the the House on Haunted Hill and the Tabler
and the Univers coming out. Then I saw that. When
I was first I only saw the trailers of Hammer,
but that was pretty scary, and then of course I
saw all the Hammers. But by the time I got

(05:59):
to middle school, I was all into Corbin's Poe series.
And you know, I saw Psycho when it first came out,
and I was like, yeah, that was that boy. I was.
I couldn't take a shower for weeks and all that time.
It's very disturbing to me, this idea that there could

(06:20):
be somebody else inside you, you know. Yeah, but so anyway,
but I did, I did read. I read. You know,
it was really into fairy tales when I first started reading.
And that's basically the origins of I guess you'd call
it folk core. It comes ultimately from folk wore. And

(06:44):
we when I was a kid, you know, not having
your TV, and if we did have it, it'd be
a few hours a day and just be kind of
like the news and stuff. But we used to gather,
you know, at dusk, the kids, and somebody always knew
some uncle, who's somebody crawled out of a grave, or

(07:08):
there's some kind of wood who you know, there's sort
of monkey spaw style of horror. It's just the whole
grisly fact of it. And then I was I was
raised a Roman Catholic in and my father was a
was a practicing Catholic, so I would go to church.

(07:29):
I went to church faithfully, and and I lived in
of course, these Catholic kind of third world countries, where
you know, they'd have processions through this. I mean, it's
very heavy, and of course in you know, Catholicism is
all about you know, eating the flesh and drinking the

(07:54):
blood and you know, suffering and you know, and so
that I think that had a good effect on me.
I always thought that, especially the Western kind of horror
basics of Frankenstein, Dracula, and I guess Jekyl Hyder or

(08:14):
the werewolf kind of blend together, that it works best
in like a kind of Christian Roman Catholic tradition where
because you know, in the Catholic Christian the devil and
the demons are real. This is not right, this is
for real, you know, And so it's not much of

(08:35):
a jump from there to you know, thinking that vampires
could show up. It's true, and I always thought it
kind of took a little away from it when it
would get to you know, when it didn't have that
sort of religious underpinning. But then when you'd see the
Asian non Christian based or you'd see that they do

(08:59):
quite well with their vampires and were wolves and ghosts
and stuff. You just have to settle into the into
the you know the culture of it. But that was
kind of how I got I think that's how I
got a taste for horror. I just always liked it.
And then when I ended up having to make a living,

(09:24):
I grew up. I didn't grow up anywhere near LA,
and back in the fifties, sixties, even seventies, you didn't.
I mean, movies were just basically made in LA and
to a certain degree in New York, but mostly LA.

(09:45):
And I didn't know anybody in the movies. All I
knew about was from what I could read. But you know,
I remember seeing Day for Night, that true movie. You know,
in the sixties, art movies were a real big thing,

(10:06):
you know, that new way for stuff on tour. Stuff
was just real entertaining. And in that Day for Night,
it's basically kind of a musical about making a movie.
So you see the crew making the movie, and you
see all these different people performing functions, and that sort

(10:27):
of became the basis of what I knew about what
making a movie was. But I never thought that. It
never occurred to me that you could actually make a
living doing TV or movies. It didn't It didn't seem
too far too far thatched. Of course, now everybody can

(10:52):
and everybody does make movies always, all the time, constantly.
But when I I didn't, really I didn't start. I try.
I started shooting with a sixteen millimeter camera when I
was given a Bolex sixteen millimeter wind up three lens.

(11:17):
These were these Bulex cameras that were used for news
gathering in the seventies. When a crew would go out
to do the news, they would have that and they
didn't have sound or anything. It was and you had
three lenses. You wound it up for like one hundred feet.
I got one, and at that time I was living

(11:38):
in the country, and I started shooting my goats and
my turkeys and stuff. And then I projected at night
on my projector after I developed it. It would be
in black and white. If I went, wow, it's like bergman,

(11:58):
this is a movie. And so then I started. I
tried making a short film, and because I got a
I got a Beta Max. Nice first in my neighborhood
to have a Beta Max. And then I recorded a

(12:18):
couple of movies and watched them over and over. One
was Kubrick's The Killing and the other was The Spiral Staircase.
The first time I could see that there's there's shots.
There's not just scenes, there's shots. And that was a

(12:40):
big eye opener for me. That then I started realizing,
you know, because I could go back and forward, I
could control it. When I went to the movies, it
just happened close as I could get because I wanted
to get inside it. Of course, one I started making movies,

(13:01):
I wanted to see the frame. I went just the
other way. I don't want to be immersed in it.
But so anyway, that was, you know, I started getting
interested in it and started reading like Box Office Magazine
and Weekly Variety and going, God, maybe you could could

(13:25):
you make a money? You know, I'll try making a movie.
I did a short film. I thought it was great
till I showed it to my friends, and then it
turned out it wasn't, you know. And I'm like that
as a cook too. When I cook for myself, it's
just delicious. But if I have to share the meal

(13:46):
with somebody, I start realizing it's not that good, you know.
And so then when I decided to try to make
a I thought, I'm going to try to make a
real movie. I'll go out and so I put an
ad in Variety that said horror movie director wanted, and

(14:09):
I got. This is before fax machines, It's like nineteen
eighty two. I got like hundreds of letters. I would
say ninety percent were from LA and ten ten or
twenty percent were from New York. Well, New York was
easy because I could drive up there from North Carolina.

(14:31):
But La i'd have to fly out for a few
days and I just have meetings all day. And then
I started realizing that everybody that I met up there
was just like me. There were people who were from
somewhere else, but they wanted to make movies. And of
course the ones I met were the ones that wanted

(14:53):
to make genre movies. And you know, not having gone
to film school or had any any kind of education
in entertainment, I just picked it up from meeting people.
And the first time I went to a film market
it was the American Film Market. And when I saw that,

(15:16):
I went, Oh, this is how you do it. You
kind of make the movie, you go and sell it
to all these countries. Because this was the great era
of video, when anybody could go to market with your movie,
which is kind of why the movies of the eighties
have this unique characteristic. They were being financed by video
when the majors wouldn't get into it. And so there's

(15:39):
a lot of people, a lot of people making companies,
producing and selling movies who had who would never be
let into the big thing, could never worked in the
big time, you know. Once I saw that, saw how
that worked, and everybody was kind of doing it right.
I was lucky because I I raised the money to

(16:03):
make my own movie so I could start out at
the top.

Speaker 5 (16:08):
It's a smart man, that's a good choice. So around
this time, one Stuart Gordon came into your life. Obviously
Stuart has passed now and a lot of people have
really begun to discover the magic that Stuart was and
you and you and Stuart had a lot in common.
I mean, showing, you know, these crazy practical effects that

(16:31):
are depraved and terrifying, but also with this just amazing
sense of humor with it that we all come to love.
Tell us about Stuart Gordon those early days.

Speaker 1 (16:41):
What did you like When I was looking for a director.
It eventually led to me going to Chicago and meeting Stuart,
who at that time was a had been working for
ten years in theater. Yeah, so he had never made
a movie. But he was a professional. He was the

(17:03):
creative director of his own, his own theater, and he
loved to shock people because the first time he really
got any, got his picture on the front page of
the paper in Madison, Wisconsin, where he went to college,
was because he in college he put on a theatrical

(17:25):
play version of Peter Pan where all the actors were naked.
You got to remember, this is in the hippie times,
and so the police shut it down and there was
a lot of go and Stuart loved it. He was like,
this is what I want. And in the organic theater
that he ran, he did regularly. He did, you know,

(17:47):
just regular plays, but he did really ambitious sci fi
and kind of horror stuff. And I just I went
to see a couple of them, and I thought, Wow,
this guy, I like, I could work with him, and
he knows what he's doing, you know. And so he
had already co written a pilot for a reanimator TV show,

(18:13):
and so we developed it into a feature and shot it.
We Luckily for both of us, he was of course,
I knew he liked he was excessive, so I like that,
and I also also he was lucky that I did

(18:38):
want that, and we didn't have to argue with anybody.
And I wanted it to be very exploitative because as
a horror fan, I liked bad horror movies, of course,
and not bad regular movies, but bad horror movies I like,
which I think is the definition of a horror fan.

(19:00):
The the so I thought, you know, I'm risking I
had two kids by then. I thought, man, I'm risking
my family's future. Is I'm borrowing money? So I know
when I watched horror movies, the worst thing are the

(19:23):
horror movies that sort of pull their punches thinking they're
going to get some kind of respect. So my feeling
was that I did, and I told him this. I said,
I just we just have to make it real entertaining,
which means very bloody and very sexy and just all

(19:44):
the way so that the movie's no good, I know,
there'll still be an audience sort you know. So that
was that was the you know, And luckily, of course
I didn't even I didn't choose to take it to
the MPAA for our rating because I knew they wouldn't
wouldn't They would just take out all the all the

(20:04):
good stuff, and you know, it meant it was difficult.
We had to you know, we had to put an
X rating on it because that's what you could if
it wasn't rated. And now X is just sex, but
back then it was also you know, it's just anything

(20:25):
that like obsity. Yeah, it's it's like anything, you know,
anything could be X rated if it was just adult.
That was the original idea. It would just be adult
because they only had g rated that are rated, you know, right.

(20:46):
But but anyway, that's as Stewart used to say, we
brought out the worst in each other. Well we were
really very really very different. I mean, Stuart is a
lifelong kind of kind of director, entertainer put on shows,

(21:08):
and I just sort of came into it, you know,
when I was thirty years old, going hey, what else
am I going to do? Let's try this. I learned
from just being on the set and hiring people and
going through the process. But I never had any you know,
I didn't have any education at it. And Stewart was

(21:32):
I mean, he was kind of a you know, kind
of a born storyteller. Some people just tell a good story.
You kind of want Stuart to be at dinner with
you because he'll pick up the slack when you need
a little entertainment, Like he's like a recontour. And so

(21:53):
we you know we I think we complimented each other
that way. You know, we were you know we were
And as then as Thaoli, his writing partner, would say,
he said, you know, Stuart and I could have made
any kind of movie you wanted to do. Horror. Of course,
whatever you start doing that ends up being stuck in it. Yeah,

(22:14):
but that's not exactly true. I mean Stuart already would
have had the reanimator pilot. Of course it was for
like all audiences, like you know, right back then, who
wants to do TV? Nobody? That's true now, you know,
with the streaming services.

Speaker 2 (22:37):
That's the prestige now.

Speaker 1 (22:38):
Although I must say I think a lot of them.
There's horror. I mean, horror is just everywhere. I mean,
it's never been bigger. But in a way it's it's
for me, it's never been more boring. I just you know,
I think that well, I forgot to mention this the
first my first introduction to horror, before I could read,

(23:00):
the first time I got money to buy a comic book.
I don't think I was I think I was four
years old, I got a horror comic. Wow, And those
horror comics were really kind of disturbing until I had
got a little older and was introduced to Mad Magazine,
And then I started understanding satire because all the horror

(23:22):
comics they were kind of they were grizzly, but the
guys writing were grown ups and they just they were
just joking around. I mean, they were so ironic and satirical.
But of course when I first first time I read
Mad Magazine, I was shocked they were selling I think

(23:49):
they at a fake ad. You know. Back then on
match books they used to try to sell you a
course in plumbing or electric and they would sell a
course and bank robbing or you know, right and buzzley,
you know, and I'd go, how can they do that?
Oh my god? You know, but you have to learn

(24:12):
the concept of satire. Yeah, and I think the I
think the when you especially in the Easy comics, which
really laid it on thick, you know, I mean that's
basically Return the Living Dead of Dan O'Bannon is post
comics in the movies for the first time, not the

(24:34):
Creek shows stuff where they think you were a batman
TV series where they think the way you make a
comic to a movie is by showing frames and going
into them and having primary colors and putting pals and no, no, no,
but that whole idea of eating brains. Who eats brains?
Nobody except in the comic books, because that's funny. It's

(24:56):
fun grisly. People are always getting revenge on each other.
I don't know. And to me, the horror was I
think the horror that I loved was kind of tended
towards the carnival type of you know, Carnival eye type
of horror, whereas it's just a fun ride, you know,

(25:19):
it's just really entertaining. But I loved you know, Rosemary's Baby,
the Exorcist and the you know, the real kind of
high end horror. Right.

Speaker 5 (25:31):
Well, you say hor today is boring. What do you
feel like it's missing? What do you think we've lost
since Reanimator?

Speaker 1 (25:38):
I don't know, just the fun of it. I think
people take themselves so seriously. You know, everybody, everybody's a author,
you know, everybody's the movie, isn't It's not just a movie.
It's not just the horror movie. It's really about, you know,

(25:58):
something else it's message forward, you know, everything's made, everything's
like more than that, it's not or it ends up
being like The Walking Dead or something where it's basically
a soap opera with a with EFTs. Well it's I mean,
obviously it's got a huge audience. I'm not you know,

(26:21):
I'm not.

Speaker 4 (26:21):
He I wish I made Walking Dead, but you know,
for my money, I prefer to watch you know, humanoids from.

Speaker 1 (26:33):
The deep, and I'm not. And even stuff like Halloween
was was ironic. Of course it wasn't. You didn't laugh
at it, but it was just ironic and it was funny.
How could this guy he didn't just kill him? And
he had to put up a tombstone?

Speaker 5 (26:52):
And you know, knowing knowing how you.

Speaker 1 (26:57):
Then there's the Last House on the Left and Bill
Snape Eyes and those don't give you much room.

Speaker 5 (27:03):
For irony, although Wes Craven classically has a lot of
humor in his stuff too, So yeah, it's.

Speaker 1 (27:09):
All there's Freddie especially, Yeah.

Speaker 5 (27:13):
Knowing knowing how you feel about the current horror realm,
are you watching much current stuff?

Speaker 2 (27:18):
Are you just kind of letting it go by?

Speaker 1 (27:20):
No? I don't. I don't watch much. I mostly do
books these days.

Speaker 2 (27:26):
What have you been reading.

Speaker 1 (27:28):
Right now? Yeah, well, I've been doing a lot of
Elmore Leonard.

Speaker 2 (27:33):
Oh nice.

Speaker 1 (27:35):
You know, I'm always interested if I see a movie
I like, I'll get the book.

Speaker 2 (27:41):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (27:41):
I mostly do audio books because then you can do stuff.

Speaker 2 (27:46):
Of course.

Speaker 1 (27:47):
I'm always really interested in how a different story is
done in different media, right, you know, and what choices
are made. What you know, when I remember that there
was that movie what's it called Pretty Little Things or something,

(28:08):
the one with you know, the girl who's when they
put a baby's or put her baby's brain in her
body or poor things, Poor things. Yes, well, when I
saw that, and it has a lot of sort of
brighter reanimator stuff in it, you know. But I mean

(28:28):
I didn't care much for the message forward. I mean,
I think it's amusing that a movie that reports to
be sort of a message forward feminist female empowerment movie
basically creates the ultimate pedophiles dream and its main character,

(28:54):
you know, a young woman with a child's mind who
just wants to fucking have orgasms. You know, that's female empowerment. Okay,
But anyway, so I immediately went and got the book
ye and read and that explained a lot to me

(29:17):
why it was the way it was. And the book
is a found footage thing anyway, by the way, But
when I read the book then I thought, I think
it came out in ninety one or ninety two, and
I thought, oh my god, if I had seen this
back then, Stuart and I could have really had fun

(29:39):
with this. I mean, I thought we would have jumped
on it. What a good idea. But mostly I don't
see a lot and I kind of I'm not one
of those people that is that enjoys watching a lot
of series. I don't binge series or anything. So I'm

(30:00):
I don't know, I'm not I'm not a great movie consumer.
In my old age younger, I thought everything was fascinating.
A movie, it's just fascinating, And now every movie is
kind of boring.

Speaker 5 (30:19):
What's what's the last one that really captured you that
that you you walked away going damp that was genuinely fascinating.

Speaker 1 (30:26):
Oh no, I can't remember. I can't think of anything.

Speaker 2 (30:29):
That's pretty telling.

Speaker 5 (30:32):
You know, you mentioned the the sort of brighter re
animator aspects in Poor Things. How How after you know,
forty years of doing this, do you feel like your
influence has left a lasting impression, because clearly it has
with things like Reanimator and you know, the even you know,
stuff like Return of Living Dead three. You can find
in so many modern movies that were clearly something that

(30:55):
played an influence on some of these filmmakers.

Speaker 1 (30:59):
Well, I'm glad. I'm glad that some of the movies
I worked on are still being watched. Yeah, I mean,
I just saw I just I think three weekends ago.
It was a screening of Return Livy Dead three and

(31:21):
Society because I did the Q and A and beforehand
I was part of a bur less act where I
got my guts pulled out, my crazy.

Speaker 2 (31:32):
You weren't there, but yeah, Jeremy was there.

Speaker 5 (31:37):
I love that You're still so just, you know, happy
to be a part of things like that, and a
lot of people that made, you know, stuff like Brider
Reanimator by this time would have either I don't know,
famously calmed down and got a little tepid, but you're
just like, fuck it, We're just gonna live in the
genre and make the best of it.

Speaker 2 (31:57):
And that that's so.

Speaker 1 (31:58):
If I was making movies, I might it might be different.
I don't know. I think there's something to nate, you know,
so I don't know what I would do now. I
probably not want to work that hard. I was telling
me older movie people when I was in the midst

(32:23):
of everything, that's saying why don't you make why don't
you direct the movie? And say, God, you got to
get up.

Speaker 2 (32:28):
So early, yeah, or stay up too late.

Speaker 1 (32:35):
But when you're doing it. Of course, I had kids
and I had to work hard, but also I just
just it was just pedal to the metal. Let's go, you.

Speaker 5 (32:44):
Know, speaking to kids in one year, you go, this
is still so funny to me. You go from Honey
ice Truck the kids, uh taking part in the creation
of an iconic children's story, to society fallowing that up
on your resume. The the shunting is right after this

(33:04):
really beautiful Disney story.

Speaker 1 (33:07):
Well you've got to remember. You got to remember that
done fantasy is just the other side.

Speaker 2 (33:13):
Of horror exactly.

Speaker 1 (33:15):
That is, if you take Honey I shrunk the kids
and make it a little less bright and have a
bad end playing you know, the the Incredible Shrinking Man
or or it's the one Doctor cyclop It is it
Doctor Cyclops, the one where he makes some all real

(33:36):
little Those movies were when we when Stuart Stewart and
I just came up with Honey, I shrunk the kids
because we both have kids, and he said, let's make
a movie for our kids, and so I and I said, oh,
when I was a kid, I was playing the grass

(34:00):
little soldier, just getting down by the tree trunk. Everything
looks so huge, you know, you know, riding on a
beetle or and he said, he said, we'll call it
teeny Weenies. It's about kids that get trunk by their
dad and thrown out. In the story is they got
to get home. And he said we should take it

(34:21):
to Disney. Well, Stewart had a really happening agent and
we were in Rome and the agent said he got
a pitch. You got a pitch for us at Disney.
So we wrote. We wrote the treatment on a yellow
legal pad on the flight back from Rome, went into Disney,
and it just rolled from there, you know. Except they

(34:44):
told us pretty early on when they made the deal
they said, look at we're going to have to change
the title teeny Whenies sounds like a low budget porn.
This was said by Jeffrey Katzenbergen, the executive di An.

Speaker 2 (35:03):
Amazing. I love that.

Speaker 5 (35:06):
So with with things that you you know, you've got
this partnership with Stuart and you're you're making all these
relationships and now you're coming in and going into established
franchises where a first film has been made and adding
to the cannon. Was there ever a like any pressure
on you when you're stepping into Reanimator or Return the
Living Dead or you know, Silent Night, Deadly Night to

(35:29):
make something incredible for the fans of the first ones.

Speaker 1 (35:32):
Yeah, I mean it's well, especially re Animator.

Speaker 2 (35:36):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (35:36):
But the thing is to see, I wasn't someone when
I just after making three movies with Stuart, then I
and I tried making a movie of Dan O'Bannon and
then he backed out, and I and I had another
one set up with Stuart and he backed out, and

(35:56):
then I thought, well, that's a good excuse for me
to direct, so I can make the deal and make
the movie, you know, do it all. And but basically,
I think anybody who's ever spent a lot of time
on a movie set at one point goes, I'd like
to direct. It doesn't see that hard. I mean it's

(36:20):
it seems like the director gets to just make all
these little decisions and everybody thinks they're wonderful, and you're
you know, they seem all very you know, seems sort
of arbitrary. But I knew that I could never get
anybody to let me direct, except that I had Bride.

(36:44):
I had the sequel to my own reality. So I
had the sequel. And so I found a friend of
mine was starting up an independent production company, and I said, well, listen,
I'll I'll let you finance the sequel to re Animator,

(37:05):
but it has to be a two pick and I
but I have to direct, produce, be in charge and
all that. But it has to be a two picture
deal because I had been told by a French distributor
once that that usually a first time director makes two
pictures is in one his first, in his last, and

(37:27):
so because if you make a first movie, it's likely
it's not going to be any good. Lord Gordon to
the contrary, although remember Stewart was the theater director for
ten years. So I said, look at you can. You
can finance Reanimator sequel, but it has to be two

(37:50):
picture deal, and that's the second one. So that way,
the first movie, if I failed, I know I have
another chance. You know, I can learn from my mistakes.
So it was it was basically just a logical idea.
And then I was looking for a project and a

(38:10):
guy gave me the script of Society, and I really
liked the paranoia of it, but it didn't have any
fantastic element, which is sort of like this blood cult.
And so I and I had just been working with
Dan O'Bannon for about a year on a project that
he was going to direct called The Men, about a

(38:33):
woman that discovers all men are aliens, a concept that
in the eighties would have worked today too, you know,
gender fluid doesn't work for those kinds of movies, and
so it was what I loved about it. It was
very pulpy, but it was real paranoia. This woman starts

(38:56):
realizing there's something going on, that it's under the surface,
you know, that is really weird. And so that's what
Society had was this idea that this kid's in Beverly
Hills and and he's kind of does feel he's going crazy.
He's going to see a shrink, you know, He's just

(39:18):
thinks parents are up to something horrible, and they are.
But so I so that's why I mean Back then,
I just didn't think a lot. I said, Hell, let's
do this. And the money was coming from Japan, and
there's a Japanese effects artist in Hollywood and screaming that

(39:38):
courage of it saw him and we just started developing ideas.
And I was at that time trying to think, I'm
really into a fact and if I was going to
make a movie, it was going to have effects. And
at that time, Nightmare on Elm Street, it was every
new one that came out was just sort of you

(40:01):
know what the rubber guys could do now with all
these new kind of new kind of materials and the
new concepts of making replacement puppets by changing the angles
to it without digital that was always a problem. And
when I watched The Werewolf, I just always wanted to

(40:21):
watch the scene where he's growing the hair in a space,
even though you could see it kind of shift. You know,
that's the magic, It's the metamorphosis, I think maybe, and
I thought, well, what effect haven't they done that I'd
like to see? And I thought about the skin melting,
And I think the origin of that might have been

(40:42):
from seeing a late night the late night movies on
TV of Doctor X by Michael Curtiz, and in Doctor
X they have a color sequence where he's got this
synthetic skin kind of it kind of melts his flesh

(41:05):
together or something. So I think that maybe had some
influence somehow, But anyway, I just imagined flesh melding together.
And then George, when I met Georgie, we just looked
at all these Dolly paintings. He said, he's the surrealist painter.
So then we started picking Dolly images to build on,

(41:30):
and then we'd have meetings at my house here to
with the writers Rick Fry and Woody Keith. Woody Keith
is now Sef Daniel, and we just kept we just
started going in that direction. They weren't, you know, they didn't.
They totally were good with it. There was no like, no,

(41:53):
what we this is our images now? There was none
of that. And I think it was Woody who came
up with the word shunting for that great ending, right,
and so you know, so, but that was it was
only because I had the bride of Reanimator is my leverage,
and I was working with people who were just starting out,

(42:17):
and nobody was around to say no. Nobody was like
saying do this, do that or you know, you know,
so that made it, you know, that made it possible
to just follow that idea where it went. People are,
you know. I think what people don't realize is that

(42:39):
the Shunting is one of the best guy in a
suit movies ever, you know. I mean, I know, the
creature from the Black Black Lagoon, I mean that thing
was swimming, but that guy was swimming. And I hey,
I produced Guyver, which has the best you known, you know,

(43:02):
suit monsters doing martial arts you'll ever see.

Speaker 2 (43:06):
It's incredible.

Speaker 1 (43:08):
Four Cages came out last year.

Speaker 2 (43:10):
More Screaming, Matt George, He's all over the disc.

Speaker 1 (43:12):
And Matt George and Steve Wang And but that Shunting
is basically twelve guys in a suit. Yeah, that's one
big rubber suit with twelve people when you see the
whole thing. So that kind of puts it in a
different context. Yep, you think about it that way. You

(43:34):
go home just a minute.

Speaker 5 (43:39):
That Society is such an incredible movie, especially you know,
we were talking about messages in a movie a minute ago,
but looking back in a twenty twenty five lens with
you know, everybody shouting eat the rich and all of
these stories happening. This was a huge part of this film.
How do you feel like the theme lives you know,
forty years later.

Speaker 1 (43:59):
Think I do think it. You know, I was very
I mean, I was very conscious of the political part
of it because I went to college during the sixties,
great protests. Everybody was political. It was a hell of

(44:20):
a lot of fun because we were all eighteen years old,
you know, or a lot of people were older, but
I was eighteen twenty years It was just politics was great.
You know, turned onto an in drop out and I
did that, and so the idea and so, and of

(44:41):
course it was all leftist politics. Back then. It seemed
like the country was just going to explode, and I was,
I was. I was a part of the left, but
I was, I wasn't you know, I wasn't all that radical,
at least a person in my personal life.

Speaker 2 (45:02):
I was.

Speaker 1 (45:03):
But politically, you know, I had to make at one point,
I had to make a living, so I always had
a job, which was very politically incorrect back then, I
and I kind of could see that you really wouldn't
want the people on the fringe to run things. Well,
today it's one hundred and eighty degrees. Now the right

(45:25):
is making the world seem like it's going to blow up,
and you don't want those guys to run it, but
you really don't want the ones on the fore. I
think you just got to get rid of the far ends.
I knew that there was fun to be had because
what I did was to take the script and just followed,
just extended it to observe me.

Speaker 2 (45:47):
Get it excessive, like you said, so the.

Speaker 1 (45:51):
So that it was about a kid in Beverly Hills,
rich people, rich people, and the guy who wrote it
is that kid would he Keith He and he was
messed up, and he was very suspicious of what was
going on and was very well aware of that Beverly

(46:14):
Hill society. His family was very wealthy. And so just
taking that idea and extending it kind of made me think, well,
I could make a new monster instead of Dracula, instead
of the typical you know, typical monsters that we have.

(46:37):
You know that most movies are based on you know,
I thought, well, this could be kind of fun to
do a different monster. But I was very careful not
to have someone get at a blackboard and give the
message here, you know, just you know, That's why I

(47:03):
had the guy say, you know, at the beginning of
the Shunting, when they get ability to say he says
aliens scum, he says, We're not aliens. We're not from
our space or anything. We've been here as long as
you Because I have a whole I have a whole
origin story for society. Man. It goes back. It's like

(47:23):
two thousand and one, it goes back to the caveman
right to Because I always feel like, especially well maybe
any movie or any story, but especially genre where it's
kind of science fictioning. I kind of feel like the
movie is just the part of the iceberg that you see,
but it's got to have a huge, a huge basis

(47:45):
to it. But you don't want to be you don't,
you know. I mean, I it comes out when he
says the rich have always sucked up for you know,
you know, low class shit like you well, I mean
that's kind of Marxism, you know. But it's also just reality.

(48:09):
H I mean, it's not. When they released the movie
in the UK where it was actually successful, I said,
would you just put on the poster a true story?
You know, because I think it is a true story.
It's just metaphorically speaking, but also there's not a real

(48:31):
I did have. Back in the early seventies, they did
the front of mine in Berkeley has put out these
these t shirts that said eat the rich with like
a plate and fork, and I and my love in
the movie actually wears it to the party. But then
he ended up having a jacket on. You couldn't see
it ruined. It didn't matter. I wasn't trying, you know,

(48:55):
it wasn't I just felt like it it that's not
really the point of it. It's just the monster and
what I And then because at the same time, so
I just took what was already in the story and
just expand, you know, kind of developed it more and

(49:18):
with and with and then there was the kind of
incest that was in there, the sister and the brother.
And then at that time, I think I'd been reading
this David Skull book about monster movies, The Monster Show
or something, and at one point he was saying, you know,

(49:41):
horror movies are about taboo. They're about taboos, you know,
whether it's cannibalism or violence or whatever, and that and
one of the ones, one of the earliest taboos that's
still really serious is incests. And so then I thought, well,

(50:02):
that's all that's already a part of the movie. Let's
bring it. Let's let's just get it, expand on it,
make it stronger. And and that is real creepy, you know,
the whole thing with the sister and then with the parents,
and it's real. It's it's real creepy. It kind of
throws you, you know, something's wrong here, you know, you

(50:27):
don't quite you know, you know, why really understand why
we got such a such an aversion to it. But
so anyway, that was how it started to It was
sort of developing those kind of narrative ideas. But then
in concert with George, who's coming up with different variations

(50:51):
of the flesh melding, and then and then Woody and Rick,
they I mean, they just had the weirdest kind of imagination.
So it's really just sort of a few witches around
the bubbling pot. But it was very disappointing for me

(51:15):
because I thought, what we made that movie. Of course,
I'm saying I always think the movie, especially when I
started out, I thought, this movie is gonna Back then
in Variety they would put the box office, you know,
and they list the box Office like Box Office Mojo,
and and I thought it's going to be number one.

(51:38):
I didn't realize that that my taste is not shared
by a lot of people. And so if you're Spielberg,
what what he likes? We all love. I love most
of his movies. His taste. Really, you know, I respond,

(51:59):
and so does almost everybody, But my taste or Stewart's
Dayse or George's, it's getting into a much more limited
number of people. And when you know, Society and Bride
kind of came out at the same time, as they
were both made under the same deal. So the minute

(52:21):
I was in post on Society, I was getting ready
to shoot Bride. Nice and I remember that Bride and
even my friends kind of didn't like it, you know,
I mean, I'm not saying it's a great movie. I
was pretty clumsy directing and all that, but it wasn't.

(52:41):
But I thought that, well, I mean, it delivers, hang
in there, it delivers. But then, you know, my friends
did kind of like Brider reanimators a little more traditional movie.
But then in the UK, where the UK just released

(53:02):
first in the.

Speaker 6 (53:03):
UK because the company that bought the UK company liked it,
so they bought the North American right, so that's why
it was released later and ended up being out here
later than.

Speaker 1 (53:16):
It was in Europe. But they released it like a
regular movie and it got great. They got good reviews.
They even brought Billy Warlock over and you know, it's
this whole thing. Of course, back then, this is pre internet,
so they'd send me a fax or something, Hey blah
blah blah, and I go, is this real? I don't know,

(53:43):
I'm not there, you know, And it did, you know.
So it it did well in UK and France and Spain, Italy,
but then here it was like nothing and so only
but then Bride over there, at least in the UK

(54:05):
wasn't seen as any great deal. I think it was
more accepted here. But the thing that was really gratifying
was about twenty years later, in the late two thousands,
all of a sudden there was this other generation that
came up in the great procession, and plus they started

(54:28):
liking the eighties. Oh yeah, I think what they liked
was what it's kind of like when I would watch
Japanese jagor nice, the Ring and the Grudge and all that, which,
by the way, the guy that I made an ecronomicon

(54:48):
and crime freeman from the Japanese producer actually created Jar,
he produced the Ring, the Grudge. He showed me the
script of the Ring before he made it. He and
he and he was, you know, the Japanese producer on
the American remakes. Very successful Japanese producer. And but I'd

(55:12):
tell my friend, I watch, like, you know, The Ring
or something of the Grudge, and you know, usually there
was a girl with hair in front of her eyes,
crawling down a hall or out of a TV or somewhere,
and and and you'd see the setup for it. And
I would sometimes I'd go, well, that seems kind of ill, lot,

(55:34):
that seems kind of stupid. Why would this person do that?
And they'd go Japanese culture. And I think that's what
happened with society, is that the part of it that
was bad when it was in its era, they'd go,

(55:56):
there's a little dicey there. But in another generation they're looking,
they'd go, isn't that stupid? That's say it's the eighties.

Speaker 7 (56:10):
You get absolved, you get you get it's like, oh okay,
it's just the eighties.

Speaker 1 (56:17):
And now they like all the rubber effects. And I
think there's something attractive now, there's something more handmade about
the eighties because you had all these it was mostly
I mean, there were just a lot of amateur filmmakers
making movies with companies that were just started up by

(56:39):
people who It wasn't that you know, there was no
curating by the business. And I think there's there's something
clumsy about the storytelling. I mean, you know, I mean,
you know, let's you watch the Thing, Carpter's the Thing
and Kurt Russell has a cowboy hat out in sub zero.

(57:01):
Oh yeah, because that's cool, you know, the eight Why
but the affects great that I'm not groundbreaking stuff.

Speaker 2 (57:15):
Yeah.

Speaker 5 (57:17):
You know, we've talked about so many of your collaborations.
There's so many throughout your story that are solid, you know,
screaming at George Stewart. One of the big ones that
we haven't really mentioned yet is John Penny worked on
some films and then the big thing I always am
on here talking about physical media and you guys just

(57:39):
just over a year ago now came out and announced
Dark Arts. Can you share what that is and what
is going on with it?

Speaker 1 (57:46):
You know what it is John Penny. I met him
when when I was trying to find a writer for
Return to Living Dead three, yeah, which it was a
whole you know, that Return Living Dead just fantastic movie,
and the second one they kind of it underperformed and

(58:11):
so the value went way down, which got it down
to my level. And I was working with I was
working with this company called Trimark, and at that time
I was working on Warlock two, you know, so we
were I was working on the story, you know, developing
the story. I was going to direct it. And then

(58:34):
they got the rights to Return Living Dead three and
asked if I'd want to do that. I said, oh, yeah,
because I've never been against doing sequels because I remember
when we were Stuart and I were talking about Bride
of Reanimator and Stuart had big time representation. I've never
had an agent, so that's how that I am. And

(58:58):
and he said, my agent said, I don't do sequels
because when you start out, you don't know where you're going, right,
you know. I mean back then, the only sequels were
like The Godfather, you know. It wasn't like now where
every sequels can be a big thing. And I said, okay,

(59:23):
but I guess I never really expected that I would
be able to make big movies as a director. And
I just thought, boy, if somebody just me a chance
to direct a movie, I'm good. And if it's sequels
that I like, I don't know, I'm happy to do it.

Speaker 2 (59:45):
There's a built in audience too.

Speaker 1 (59:47):
So then I got a chance to do that and
they and then they said the only thing that it
needed to have didn't have to have the characters, the actors,
none of that stuff. It just had to have the
gag and the braining. And for some reason, I mean
usually I get real into the irony and all the funny,
you know, And for some reason, I just wanted to

(01:00:10):
have the main character be living dead to change the
dynamic because I thought, at nineteen ninety two, there's just
been too many zombie movies. What do you get to do?
And so I had always thought that the ride of
Reanimator was the best character in that movie, but I

(01:00:33):
didn't have confidence in her. I brought her in at
the end like the Bride of Frankenstein, and she shows
up in the movies ending, and I thought she needs
her own movie kind of, And so so that was
sort of the one thing I wanted to do, and
then I got pitched by many many writers, and John

(01:00:57):
Penny came in and he had the story of the
military weapon zombies and the freezing with the bullet and
the other colonel who thought they should do it a
different way, and and and so, and it was a

(01:01:18):
Romeo and Juliet. It was the kids on the run, right,
and the girl was dead and so wow, that was
it for me. And so we immediately started started developing
it and working on it. And he's been we've been
good friends ever since. We you know, we work on

(01:01:38):
a lot of stuff. And then about you know, a
few years ago, you know, everybody's making movies and they
make these no budget movies they call the micro budget
and I can't be in that business. Nobody's going to
work for me for free, right, But I said, hey,

(01:02:02):
we could sell them because I was a partner in
a sales company in the two thousands, I think I
think I started in about two thousand and seven or something.
So I wanted to get into sales. And because you
just it's really hard to make a movie and then

(01:02:25):
not be able to touch it, and so you kind
of you know, and actually selling movies is how you
get movies. Finance. That's how you get the money is
by selling, and so I kind of got into that
and then we started out at first with Dark Arts.
We just at first we just started out being producers reps.

(01:02:47):
I said, you know, there's all these people making independent movies,
but they don't they don't know how to make a deal.
And I lived it because when I made Reanimator, fortunately
got a company to sell it and distribute it. We
just kept all the money and I had to assume

(01:03:10):
them and it was terrible. And because I didn't know,
you know, read the content. You don't know what the
what the business.

Speaker 2 (01:03:20):
Is, plus no representation, like you said.

Speaker 1 (01:03:24):
So then what we would do at first, we would
just say, look at somebody has a movie and say
we can we'll we'll set you up with a foreign
sales deal. Yeah, and so we'll find someone to sell
it for you, and we'll help you. We'll make the
contract for you and make it a contract that's going
to be good for you. And then we get a

(01:03:44):
like a commission, like a like an agent or something.
And so we started doing it that way, and then
that kind of turns into doing North America domestic because
a lot of those those those sales companies also do
domestic so then we start getting into that. And so
then we just started thinking, well, you know, we might

(01:04:11):
as well just get into this because we can. If
you know, when people would show me a movie that
they made and I'd say, well, i's hey, let me
sell it, you know, if it's a horror or something,
and and then I'd say, you know, but next time,
would you just send the script ahead? Would you just

(01:04:34):
talk to us? It's not about spending more money. But
because most of most of these s folks, most of them,
i'd say, are not in LA, right, So if you're
in LA, you're in the midst of everything. You know,
you still need help. But if you're you know, you know,

(01:04:54):
out of LA, you can make the movie and be
very enthusiastic, but you don't necessarily know men, anybody in
the business. And if you're here and you try making
a movie just your friends and everybody, you know, it's
going to let you know when you're off. Everybody's savvy.

(01:05:16):
You know, there's a film I queue you know in
LA that it's just almost in the air or something.
People know everybody's doing something. But if we're in you know,
Phoenix or Cleveland or you know, you don't know, there's
nobody around to tell you that that's not a good idea.

(01:05:40):
So anyway, we got into it so that we could
get in on the micro budget stuff, you know, and
and it's it's a it's it's a lot of work,
but luckily John does most of it. We're always looking
for movies. So if you've got a horror movie and
you need someone to distribute it, email us.

Speaker 2 (01:06:04):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:06:04):
Dark Arts Entertainment.

Speaker 5 (01:06:07):
Dark Arts announced that they were partnering with the m
v D H to be putting out is that for.

Speaker 1 (01:06:11):
The Yeah, we do the retail through m v D.
You know, there's three, there's physical and if you're direct
to consumer, is a very very big deal to set up. Yeah,
So most most companies you know that aren't big enough

(01:06:33):
to do that go through m v D. M v
D has different tiers of deals, so you get the
one that works for you and they get they get
them out there. But that's that's basically considered retail when
it's on Amazon and all that, and then to do streaming,
m v D can do that, but there's a lot

(01:06:53):
of different companies that that you can deal with for
streaming and so it's you know, it's it depends on
the movie with the best way to go and the
main thing is is not to lose money.

Speaker 5 (01:07:09):
Right Well, on that note, I'm obviously here on you know,
physical media side of things, and we probably should finish
this up with some really cool things. I mean, Ignite
Films has been making some waves this year with a giant,
just beautiful release of Reanimator, which obviously you had a
big part in, and then they announced shortly after that

(01:07:30):
was shipping that Bride is getting a similar sort of
gigantic release from them.

Speaker 1 (01:07:36):
That is so I don't think Bride would. Re Animator
deserves a big fur thing. And they did a great job. Actually,
Eagle Rock and Ignite for the companies, and Eagle Rock
is is the company that actually took on the job

(01:08:03):
of restoration and and you know produced it, and I
think they also do delivery. Ignite is a depart is
a distributor. They did well, they did without Ego Rock.
They did Invaders from Mars, the original one. They did
a nice job of restoration. So so it's a but

(01:08:28):
actually those companies and Unearthed, the company that distributed diver
are all there's one partner in common with all of them,
who's also the guy who financed Society and bright up

(01:08:48):
the reanimated with Wild Street Pictures back.

Speaker 2 (01:08:52):
He's got his hand and everything. Wow, Well, he's just one.

Speaker 1 (01:08:55):
He's one of the few, one of the few guys
in the movie business that doesn't really want to be
on the set or get behind the camera or any
of it. You know. But in any case, Yeah, the
I think following up Reanimator with Bride this fall will
be a well, give, it'll get Bride more attention. See,

(01:09:19):
I don't think I don't think Bride would would get
that much attention, you know if you waited a few years, right,
you know, I get that. But to go right into it,
I think there'll be a lot of excitement.

Speaker 5 (01:09:34):
I think the the logical question for many people that
love your work and love these films and physical media specifically,
is is that possibly going to be followed up with
Society shortly after that?

Speaker 1 (01:09:46):
Well? What I'd like to do before I would like
to I wish I owned Beyond Reanimator because I think
that would you know, it's it's got, it's it's got
to his charms. But it'd be great. I always wanted
to have a three pack. I've never that's the problem

(01:10:06):
when you made, you know, these movies get scattered around.
I know. I did a couple of The Silent Night
Deadly Nights, and I was kind of thrilled when Lionsgate
came or they called it Best Front, and he came
out with the pack you get all those crappy movies together.

(01:10:28):
But they put up in that pack. Corbin and I
tried to make a third one. I could just never
get them to give us the rights. He loves that part.
But anyway, I think that I like that. I like
getting all the packs together. I wish, you know, I wish,
I wish I owned Dagon. I think that would be

(01:10:48):
a treatment that fits in an Necronomicon. It's just really
sad that I can't get a hold of that because
that would be just never is never seen. And I
think it's I'm not saying it's great, but man, it's
got some cool stuff. I mean, Jeffrey Combs is playing
HP Lovecraft and he's made up to look like him

(01:11:10):
and sort of an action hero. I like. I like
an Acronomicon a lot. I think I think it would
do good, you know.

Speaker 2 (01:11:18):
It's understand, pardon it's under scene.

Speaker 5 (01:11:22):
I feel like a lot of people would truly love
it if just given the opportunity to see it.

Speaker 1 (01:11:25):
Where do you see it? I think the only way
to see it is I think you can find it
on YouTube.

Speaker 5 (01:11:31):
I have an import. It was released over I think
in Chermany or something like that, so I had to
have it.

Speaker 1 (01:11:39):
But I mean, the thing is is it's not on streaming.
It's right, it's it's owned by the cop one of
the production companies. It was financed by one half by
a Japanese company and the other by the by French company,

(01:12:01):
and the French company licensed it North America to New
Line and the New Line didn't do anything with it.
And then it just sad because they made these back then,
they'd make these deals for twenty years, twenty place. So
they it just goes into a library. These are companies

(01:12:21):
that aren't focused on joining their library. They're focused on
making hunger loans, you know, And the library is basically
real estate. It's collateral for bank loads, so they're not
they don't have an interest. It's not worth their while

(01:12:42):
to even sometimes license it out for someone else to
put it out because they got to get their lawyers
to deal. You know. It's so it's really it's sad.
And the French company, I don't know, they don't have
any interest in I tried to just get the Spanish
rights when I was living in school.

Speaker 5 (01:13:03):
I really just want to say thank you for all
the time. I mean, we've been here almost ninety minutes
and you've been incredible and some of the best stories.
I mean, you are an idol for so many people
that love physical media nowadays and films that you know,
people were raised on Society and Brighter Reanimator and it.

Speaker 2 (01:13:22):
Means so much.

Speaker 5 (01:13:23):
And you know, showing my kids Honeyce Trunk the kids
was one of my defining moments and they loved it too.

Speaker 1 (01:13:29):
Well. You know, people, I'm starting to think I might
start collecting Blu rates and DVDs again, because you know,
I'm constantly paying money on VOD for movies I've seen
one hundred times and they never lower the price exactly,
you know, and then if you think you can buy

(01:13:50):
it on VOD, then that company goes out of business.
Still kid yourself, or they lose a license. Yeah, you know,
and so my friends that usually the people I know
that collect Blu rays and DVDs. They have huge screens,
you know, they have huge projection and which I have projection.

(01:14:15):
It's the cheapest, best way to watch movies. Don't carry
those big heavy things around, you know. But he you know,
I want to see a movie, I've got to go
pay five dollars for it. And I'm going I used
to own this movie on VHS for great sakes, you know,

(01:14:37):
it's not like it's I was telling my wife just
the other day because my grandson was over and we're
watching a couple of old movies and we had to
buy and I said, you know, I should just start
getting the blue rays. I should just because if you get,
if you look around, you get, you get them on sale.
Oh yeah, it won't cost you much more than ready

(01:14:57):
them and then ver and you got it right there.
It just of course you've got to be a librarian.
You got to figure out a Dowey decimal system or
something that's true.

Speaker 5 (01:15:10):
So speaking of that, like I like I was asking,
do you think society is going to make its way
from Eagle Rock and Ignite eventually?

Speaker 1 (01:15:17):
I think so? Yeah, Okay, I.

Speaker 5 (01:15:21):
That that one scene is enough to I mean it's
it's like film school in just a couple of minutes
on screen to be able to show what you can
do with I mean, like you said, twelve minutes in
a suit that can change somebody's life, and it impacted
so many people.

Speaker 2 (01:15:41):
It's amazing.

Speaker 1 (01:15:42):
Definitely, it definitely definitely pays off. It's that sucker punch
of the movie. Yeah, you just have to hang in there.

Speaker 5 (01:15:52):
I agree, and it's one of those stories that pays off.
I mean, you ask anybody if they're watching that movie,
posse it forty five minutes to do it.

Speaker 2 (01:16:00):
Tell me how this movie ends. If you've never seen
nobody's ever guess that.

Speaker 3 (01:16:08):
I'm as so nice to talk with you. I have
been a media studies professor at the University of North Carolina,
Greensboro for about twenty years now, and I teach several
of your movies, and.

Speaker 1 (01:16:32):
Not much do.

Speaker 3 (01:16:36):
I do get a stipend to get to get these
get a little bit, but I teach society a lot,
and the students really get into, as you were saying,
the generations. They get into the esthetic, and they also
get into the themes. And when the pandemic ended and

(01:16:59):
we were first stable to go back out into into society.
I went to a bar with a friend of mine
and this this young man uh ran up to me saying,
doctor Dodson, Doctor Dodson, and I he he he. I
realized he was a student that I had had six

(01:17:21):
or seven years before. And he started to take his
shirt off, and he got the he got the shirt off,
and he turned around and he showed me this, and
I just I just wanted you to know that you
have truly left a mark.

Speaker 2 (01:17:42):
On on society.

Speaker 1 (01:17:46):
Yeah, hilarious. Tell him, Tell him good luck, you'll need it.

Speaker 5 (01:17:53):
Thank you for listening to the Disconnected podcast. There's one
big thing that you could do to help the show,
and that is to leave a rating and review you
on the podcast service of your choice.

Speaker 2 (01:18:02):
Thank you.

Speaker 8 (01:18:33):
Have you ever wanted to dive deeper into the horror
movies you love? Beyond the Blood is a horror podcast
for fans who want more than just surface level screams.
We do deep dives into the movies that shaped us,
digging into director commentaries, behind the scenes stories, deleted scenes,
and the special features that most people skip. Each episode
is a love letter to the genre. We break down

(01:18:54):
how these films were made, The creative risks that paid
off or didn't, and the lasting impact had on the
genre as a whole, from seventy Slashers to modern nightmares.
We celebrate the craft, chaos, and characters that keep us
coming back. If you're the kind of fan who rewatches
movies with the commentary on, or you simply grew up
in the video store horror isle, the Beyond the Blood

(01:19:16):
Podcast was made for you. New episodes every single week.
Subscribe Let's dig deep. Welcome to the Beyond the Blood Podcast.

Speaker 1 (01:19:31):
Thank you for listening.

Speaker 4 (01:19:32):
To hear more shows from the Someone's Favorite Productions podcast network.

Speaker 1 (01:19:36):
Please select the link in the description.