From Creepers to Creatures — Inside the Mind of Horror Writer Sean-Michael Argo

He’s the brain behind Jeepers Creepers: Reborn — and his twisted imagination doesn’t stop there. In this killer conversation, we talk with writer and filmmaker Sean-Michael Argo about his journey into the world of horror, the art of crafting stories that crawl under your skin, and the raw reality of indie filmmaking.

Sean shares behind-the-scenes insights on working in the Jeepers Creepers universe, dives into his eerie upcoming projects (The Hoodoos & Feral Hymn), and breaks down why horror still has him hooked after all these years.

If you love indie horror, storytelling, and the darker side of cinema — hit play and join us for one hell of a ride.

For more of my content - https://linktr.ee/FirstClassHorror

Check out Sean's work here - https://www.instagram.com/seanmichaelargo

Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/class-horror-cast--4295531/support.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
You can run, but you can't Guide from the class
hardcast Haunting you from the Emerald Isle, your host Aaron
Doyle takes you on a journey to the depths of
horror with exclusive interviews, horror news, reviews, and more. Tickets.
Please you were about you under the theater of the
mad Enjoy the show.

Speaker 2 (00:24):
Sean, Welcome to the show. Pleasure to have you on.
How are you doing today?

Speaker 3 (00:27):
Thank you very much, appreciate your patience and running me down.
I've been all over the place lately.

Speaker 2 (00:32):
Yeah, you're a busy man, and some lot of stuff
I want to get into with that, but I guess
to get started. Where did filmmaking, and maybe obviously with
a focused on horror, when did that all start for
you to be like more than just a dream and
turn it into a reality.

Speaker 3 (00:52):
To be honest, Yeah, I was living in Washington, DC,
taking a just trying to see what that was going
to be like, get involved, these ideas of getting involved
at a nonprofit or something, and I ended up literally
just walking through an indie film set and ended up
meeting the director and just started talking and yeah, I

(01:12):
saw I had never known that movies could be made,
not blockbuster movies, and I had no idea that indie
film even existed, and just getting together with this little
crew in DC, it just blew my mind. Again. I
had no idea that you could do low bunch of movies.
I just I was ignorant to that reality, and so
I just dove in head first. Yeah. I think from

(01:37):
then on I was either working in film or trying
to work in film. That can always be difficult paying
the bills you sometimes you can't always so that I
have a If you look at my resume, there's a
long list of we worked that job for a month.
I'm like, yeah, because then I quit and went and
made a movie, and then I got another one for
another month or two, and I went and made a movie.

(01:58):
So yeah, I would say, just right from the start,
the indie world was my world. And even now I've
had a few externions into larger Hollywood, but I always
end up back to my roots.

Speaker 2 (02:11):
Prior to that point, was filmmaking writing things like that.
Was that something that was on your mind or was
it just complete coincidence you just happened to come across film.

Speaker 3 (02:21):
Sex writing Writing has always been my thing ever since
I was a little kid. I always wanted to write novels,
and so that that's been with me my whole life.
But yeah, still really was me just randomly wandering onto
a set. When I got back from DC, I moved
back to Arkansas and my brother was there and he
was already bugged into this little indie horror crowd in Fayetteville, Arkansas,

(02:42):
and so I started doing some pa stuff with him,
and yeah, it was I had no and no point
in my life had ever thought, well, I'm gonna make movies.
I'd always wanted to write when I just this was
prior to self publishing being an option for people. So
I had just written all that off, and that's what
I was doing in DC, was trying to get a
job as a staff rinner somewhere just to use that skill.

(03:03):
But no, movies just fell into my lab and no,
I was like twenty eight, no plans for that, and
it just but once they got me all the way
right away.

Speaker 2 (03:14):
So for some people that it might frustrate them in
a way to hear that that, like it all happened
coincidentally to a degree. Now, I do think obviously, had
you not have had passion, skill, talent, tenacity, stuff, like that.
I don't think it's as simple as just WHOA. Maybe
if I just wander onto a film said, I might
just somehow. I don't think it's as simple as that.
But I guess how does one go from that situation

(03:38):
to then actively writing and creating projects, Because I feel
like those are worlds apart in a way, and maybe
they're not lost on a lot of people. How difficult
that transition is to quote unquote overnight success that takes
maybe multiple years.

Speaker 3 (03:56):
Yeah, Like I said, my passion had always been writing.
I have a storyteller, and not to make it depressing,
but at that time there was just no there was
no avenue for that, and so I had taken that
part of myself and hung it on the wall. It
was like focused on just finding it, finding my way
through life. And so in a lot of ways, you're right,
it was I was still a storyteller. It was just
this rapid, explosive exposure to the media of Felm and

(04:22):
I think that's what really locked me in was that
I didn't have to ask anybody's permission. That's what was
great about this indie thing is they were just some
people that they pulled a little bit of money together
and some gear, and they just went and did it.
And at that time, being a writer was all about
you get your manuscript, you send your inquiry letters, you

(04:43):
get your rejection letters, and you're constantly asking for permission
to do what you want to do. And here I
was surrounded by these rebels who were just like, not,
we're making a movie. That's what we're doing. And that
attitude is so pervasive throughout the indie film world. I
just picked up a on that and so I started

(05:04):
just in in some ways it is a little irresponsible.
It was very much a trial by errors because I
was like, I'm just a guy in Arkansas who's done
a couple of films as a PA, but now I
want to make movies. So I guess that makes me
a producer. So I start calling around trying to raise money.
I get some money, I'm hire a writer, I hire
a director because again I have no idea what I'm doing.

(05:25):
And then just over time, you get a handful of
films made and you start picking things up. I was
very lucky that my second film, Sugar Crete, I got
to work with the director who learned it defeated Roger Corman,
his name was James Cotton, and so when we got together,
he was finally able to start taking some of that
that that hillbilly rebel energy and mold that into actual

(05:48):
professional you know passways. But yeah, I would say it
was very much a self starting situation. There was nobody
around to tell me no, I couldn't do it, and
then I was crazy because there's no INDI film. You
decide you're going to do a thing, you do a thing. Yeah,
you know in that movie that that first movie, Don't
Walk in Winter would but it never got released. It's

(06:10):
a piece of shit. You have to That was the
breakthrough realizing you just can if you have enough willpower
and charm and friends, so you can pull something together
and start down that path towards becoming a professional.

Speaker 4 (06:27):
How underplayed would you say?

Speaker 2 (06:28):
The skill of being able to network?

Speaker 4 (06:31):
And then maybe I've heard of it so many.

Speaker 2 (06:34):
Times from creative people that they say they have such
a passion for storytelling and writing whatever it might be,
and then when they start to go into initial meetings
or zoom calls to pitch the idea and be trying
and get somebody else involved and financially and things like that,
and not realizing how quickly they were Like wow, I
didn't really know what to expect, as in, you can

(06:59):
be as passionate as you like about your project or
your work or whatever, but then having to try and
sell that to somebody that may have no clue or
interest in that particular genre. But still I guess still
get them to go. You know, actually, yeah, this is
this is a good idea.

Speaker 3 (07:14):
Yeah, when you're in when you're in what I call
indie world, when you're an indie world, you very much
have to do that yourself. Do you think about Hollywood?
You have If I'm in Hollywood, I write a script,
I give it to my agent, My agent goes and
does all They go and do those meetings, and then
those agents sign, they get the script signed with producers,
who then go and do their meetings with the money people.
And so there's this whole industry of people whose jobs

(07:38):
are to take meetings and do networking. And when you're
an indie person, that that job is you and so
there and there is it is a skill set, and
that's that was unnecessary evil that I had to I
think I think I'm pretty good at it now, but
I've had about twenty years I can. I'm to a
point now where I can regularly securefy anything, get them,

(08:00):
get pitched the movie, get everything together. But that that
that takes a while, especially as a as an indie person,
because there isn't this huge network of people who are
full time meeting takers and that's h Yeah. So when
you're on your own like I am, like a lot
of folks are you, as long as you acknowledge that

(08:21):
it is a skill set and it's its own job,
then you're good. And just make sure that you take
that paycheck for yourself as well when you're working out
your budget, because that is a job. Yeah. And when
you get up into the bigger million and up type movies,
you meet people who that is their ex lucid job
is they get those meetings together, they put the script

(08:42):
and the money together, and then they get take a
paycheck and walk away. So they it's almost like they
cag we used to exist, but don't really do. They
don't really seem to do anything, and yet without them
there is no mood.

Speaker 4 (08:56):
Is it difficult too?

Speaker 2 (08:57):
And I don't want to sound completely negative about the
Endie Street or anything like that, but I've definitely heard
some stories behind the scenes from people that again maybe
out of excitement for being creative and somebody saying yes
to an opportunity.

Speaker 4 (09:11):
Okay, I'm gonna give you some of the money.

Speaker 2 (09:13):
X Y and Z had people tell me like I
wasn't business savvy enough, I didn't think about my own
financial stability either, and maybe accepting contracts or accept in
little add ons to things, and then afterwards realizing, Wow,
I really got fucked over.

Speaker 3 (09:30):
There, and yeah, you get to that's a Unfortunately, that's
something you have to win yourself or you have to
what's some of that street street wise knowledge that you
have to get either yourself or if you're surrounding yourself
with good people, eventually you're going to run into those
folks who have had that experience, because it is even
if you're making a movie for ten thousand dollars or

(09:51):
ten million dollars, it's still an intellectual property. It's a
piece of digital real estate or cinematic real estate, a
piece of business. And so just because it's cheap as
hell doesn't mean you shouldn't or tried to do it right,
because you never know. One thing. For example, I have

(10:14):
a movie out on to b right now called Binary
Samurai that I made for like maybe eleven grand, But
the amount of paperwork and delivery materials and I was
required to give in order to get that distribution. If
I had approached it sloppy, I wouldn't have had it
and that deal would be dead. So you've got to

(10:34):
have You've got to be thinking about that. So it's
not just building your story. You've got to be thinking
about release forms, permission slips, just insurance. You've got to
You've got to You've got to be thinking about all
that stuff. But what I will say is that, in
my opinion, now is the absolute best time to be
an indie filmmaker because of how upfront all that stuff is. Now.

(10:58):
You can take care of a lot of your tech
stuff on websites, so you can get movie insurance is
really easy to get now, you can a lot of
the budgeting software is up there. Legal Zoom has its
own film section. Streamers are varying levels of indie access.
The cameras are so good now, So this is a

(11:19):
great time to be an indie filmmaker. But you've got
to start with those business funt models for sure, and
a lot of us don't have that going into Yeah.

Speaker 2 (11:27):
And that's definitely hard, like from several people saying like that,
there's obviously, unfortunately people out there who notice and I
supposed to take advantage of maybe outright purchasing stories or
different things and just could take complete control with the
advent of streamers and things like that. Obviously, I can

(11:47):
imagine that it's a really good thing when you're an
indie filmmaker that there is so many options of where
your work can live. Do you find that at that
level though that there's downsides that as well.

Speaker 4 (12:00):
I feel like.

Speaker 2 (12:01):
Sometimes there's so many projects I've come across from different
people that I feel didn't get a fair shout because
their movie just got dumped with one hundred other movies
on the same week, and you're like, it's a bit
unfortunate it is.

Speaker 3 (12:14):
There's I was an actor in a movie that a
friend of mine wrote and directed. It was like a
little Mermaid remake. And while that was fun, it was
a great movie, had a decent sized budget. We shot
in Caribbean and it was picked up by Lionsgate and
I can't guss how much they paid for it, but
what I will say is considering how much they paid
for it. I was shocked and disappointed that they did

(12:36):
zero marketing for it. They just they dropped a trailer
on YouTube, stuck it on streaming, and that was it. Now,
I've heard to the Grapevine that they're pleased with how
it did, but that, to me, that was a classic
example of you could have done something more with that film,
but it would have taken some effort. And I think
that's what we've lost with a lot of the streamers
now is a distribution company. The most of them, even

(12:59):
the Biggs, the stige Ones, they're doing volume dups, and
so they're not creating these fine two marketing campaigns for
movies anymore. They're just shoving them out there.

Speaker 4 (13:09):
Why do you think that is?

Speaker 2 (13:10):
Do you think that's because I don't know, fear of
they might see your work or something and think, oh,
we better snap this up now before another.

Speaker 4 (13:17):
Company gets it.

Speaker 2 (13:17):
Let's just I guess batch by any project we feel
good about, and then whatever happens, who cares.

Speaker 3 (13:23):
Yeah, I think a lot of it is that is
that you'll have. Yeah, it's the Walmart approach, It's the
why sell one hundred cans when you can sell a
thousand cans just they're just I think a lot of
those companies, most of them, really, they're banking on that
diamond in the rough, And so if they're releasing one
hundred films every month, why spend the money on marketing

(13:44):
Because we don't know which one's gonna pop and which
one isn't. But we know that one is going to pop.
So for them, the money is there. It's the individual
filmmaker that kind of get lept in the dust there,
because if you're one of those one hundred films, the
distribution company didn't support you, they didn't market your product
because they don't have to. They know that one of

(14:05):
them is going to be a runaway success just by
word of mouth. Yeah, But at the same time, I
think as long as you going into it that you're
going to have to do your own marketing, and if
you can get your distribution deal to reflect that extra
effort on your part, I think that's the way to go.
And there's a one hundred different ways to get to that,
whether you're winning awards at film festivals or if you're

(14:27):
right before you make the deal you're like, hey, I'm
going to show you here's my budget. We're going to
be going all these cons, we're going to be selling
blu rays, So I think filmmakers also have to take
some responsibility for that. Like I said earlier, in Hollywood,
there's a huge engine, just as many people taking meetings
for financing the movie. One of my jobs in my

(14:48):
early days was as a sales guy. I worked for
Maxim Media and Brave Damage Films in Phoenix, and that
one was wild because they're releasing four films every month.
Most of them are just basement horror movies, but all
of that stuff. So it was fun, but we didn't
really do a lot of marketing for it. We were
more concerned with throwing new titles at the buyers, and

(15:11):
so we were making our sales because they were like, oh,
it's a new movie, so we'll buy a thousand or
two thousand copies because it's a new movie. So there
wasn't really much of an incentive for us to market
because we're gonna have another four movies next month too,
and another four after that, and that's how a lot
of those streamers are. And then when I worked for

(15:33):
Quantum Releasing, I did international sales, so you travel around
to the markets and you sell licenses to different countries,
and the companies would always do okay, but it's because
we go there with a big catalog, so I might
have again, I've got that can films. I sell one
film for one hundred thousand dollars to the UK. That's

(15:53):
great for that one producer, but all the other producers
they missed out because that at the end of the day,
I'm just going to that guy, like what do you want?
So you're not tailoring your sales plan specific to that movie.
And I think knowing that and knowing that how all
those companies work, we as independent filmmakers just have to
we have to pick up that slack. There's no there's

(16:13):
really no other way around it.

Speaker 2 (16:16):
Do you think then that's why we're seeing things now
that maybe, especially within the harder community, it's going back
to more grassroots. Like I'll use Terrifier as an example
that how they were able to kind of transition from
anthology short to feature but like pretty low budget to

(16:36):
jump up another bit. And but they've done a lot
of the work themselves and interacted with the community and
got different influencers, podcasters, all that stuff, Like they were
doing so many interviews off their own back. And now
it's gotten obviously, I know what's gotten to that next
level now and they've made millions and millions of dollars
off the back of the latest one. But is that
kind of the key I guess then for you guys,

(16:57):
is you really have to get into the nitty grit.
And like you said, even things like blue rays and stuff,
I feel like the horror community is still it's still
a physical media community for the most part. Like you
get behind things that we want the blu ray, but
we want the signed photograph, we want the mask, we
want the d shirt, all that kind of stuff.

Speaker 3 (17:15):
Yeah, we want to know, we want to know the filmmakers,
we want to see the people. I think it's also
Terrifier is a great example. I like Charlie Steed's he's
an indie film director. He's got a lot of stuff out.
Now what is great about those and Terrifiers. The Alpa
example is Damian Leoni. He didn't just make Terrifier and
then go immediately go do something else just to keep

(17:36):
the paychecks going. You made Terrifier and then he was like, no,
Terrifier is special. I'm going to pour all of my
time and attention and energy into this story. And so
when the second one came out, he just he stayed
with that one, then the third. So now he's reaping
the benefits of the third one. Where you have a
lot of people and I've done it myself where you
got in there, you produced and directed, and you wrote

(17:57):
a movie and that's great, but you forget about it
because it's in post, because you need to go get
paid to do the next one. And so individual filmmakers
can treat their own movies like pieces of content or
not valueless content, but we could trick ourselves into being
volume creators as well. And so I think it is

(18:19):
if I'm if I'm a grip on a movie, I'm
not really gonna think about that movie after I'm done
making it. I'm gonna go grip the next movie and
the next movie. So there's a there's a disconnect between
the gig based mentality and creating this piece. I hesitate
to say content, this piece of cinema said. At some

(18:39):
point somebody, ideally it's the director or the producer, is
taking that piece of cinema and they're not thinking about
the next job. They're thinking about, how do I get
this one in front of as many people. How do
I make money with this one? So I think in
a lot of ways, it's a question of priority and
focus and Terrifier is a fantastic example of what happens
when you just zero in.

Speaker 2 (19:00):
Do you find from a professional standpoint And maybe this
is just something that I'm noticing as like an audience member,
But remember years ago when they would bring out movies
on DVD in Blu Ray and you would have special features,
And I feel like there was an ear there where
nobody really cared about that. And now I feel it's
come full circling and where now people are looking for

(19:21):
that stuff.

Speaker 4 (19:21):
And I've seen so many people even online.

Speaker 2 (19:23):
Ask about like, how is there a way that we
can Okay, maybe I don't like to collect physical media,
but how can I get access to the director commentary
online without having to purchase of blue ray? Do you
think there's something to that? And have you noticed that
maybe the audience are more receptive to, like you said,
finding out about the person behind the camera, the person

(19:46):
behind the story.

Speaker 3 (19:47):
Yeah, I think you're spot on. I think it's something
we're doing for the Hohodus movie I did last year
and the western we're about to do is we've collected
all this behind the scenes stuff, all these photos, little interviews,
little videos working with bar or whatever, and once those
movies come out, we're going to start releasing that stuff
on our social media platforms, so that if you get

(20:08):
the Blue Ray, you'll be able to have all that stuff.
But if you're buying a Blue Rays because you want
the physical media, and so I don't think that the
special feature should be exclusive to the physical media. I
want people to be able to go. You know, I'd
like to hear the director talk out of his ast
for an hour while we watch this movie. There it
is on YouTube. There, it is on x rumble or
or wherever. Because I think people do they do peaking

(20:31):
behind the curtain, and for better or worse, our whole
industry has been very much exposed the curtain, the man
behind the curtain. There is no curtain. You just see
the man. Yeah, And I think it's magical that even
though we now see how the sausage is made, people
still want to They want that. Yeah, we want to
see that, the nitty gritty stuff. And I'm elated that

(20:53):
hasn't reduced anyone's interest. It's actually made it. More people
are doing they want they want to see the magic trick.
Then they want to know how the magic trick is made.
But knowing how it's made doesn't take anything away from
the magic trick. And that seems so counterintuitive to that
veil of secrecy that was present. But at least when
I started in the film industry, you wanted that missique.

(21:16):
Oh they're making a movie. It's all very closed doors,
and now it's now throw the doors open, let them
see how the sausage gets made. Yeah, that's what they want. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (21:24):
It's funny because I even have friends who are not
really involved in anything like that. We'll go to the theater,
watch movies, things like that, and now I find that
even there, they go see a movie and instantly we
walk outside in psych theorondrophones. I want to find out
about the director, or how the writer came up with
that idea, or how this was put together. And I'm
starting to notice that more and more of people who

(21:45):
I would consider like just your mainstream audience who would
just enjoy movies, are now also really interested. And I
want to know a bit more about that, and why
you mentioned something there that I haven't heard anybody mention
at all recently, and it just got me thinking, you
mentioned rumble and not specifically this is not specifically just
targeted towards you saying rumble, but it obviously lets me

(22:08):
know that you have your finger on the pulse to
a degree. Is that something that you have to constantly do,
as in see you know what else is out there?
It can't just be like you said before. It would
have been Okay, it's going to go to Blockbuster, and
then when it's finished in Blockbuster, it's going to go
to Walmart or whatever, it's going to go to Netflix,
and then it goes to the free streamers and blah
blah blah. You mentioned that though, makes me think that

(22:30):
obviously you keep an eye on where is relevant and
how trends change.

Speaker 3 (22:35):
I think it's important to do that. I picked up
that mentality when I worked for a company called Hanover
House and that was when I was in Field of
Arkansas and they were a DVD vendor to Walmart, and
part of their business model was they had a lot
of new release movies, but they would go find other
movies that had their day in the sun. But then
they relicnsed them, repackage them, redo all their art, and

(22:59):
get them out there and present them like they were
new for the ten dollars bins or whatever. And the
guy it's philosophy, the guy that owned the company, this
whole thing was, these are like pieces of real estate,
these are houses. This is lay it storytelling land as
it were, And you could always be doing something with me.
You can always find a new life for it. I

(23:19):
remember at that time, the Boondock Saints movie was going
through that little Blacklist scenario and the company that was
trying to sell it reached out to us, and ultimately
our company passed on it because they didn't want to
make the big man mad. But when that came across
my death and I was like, there you go. There's
Boondock Saints, this little cult movie that I so loved,

(23:40):
and it has a chance to now get a whole
new life on DVD with Walmart. And so I think
I've taken that and I've carried it with me into
the streaming world. I work with a company called All
Channel Films. They're they're my favorite, They're my favorite. They're
a great company for indies, and I've worked with them
for a long time time, and the arrangement that we

(24:03):
have is if they find a new streamer, they're always
looking for new platforms, and so if they find a
new platform and they're not sure about it, they're like,
there's a short list of producers they'll call where they're like, hey,
we found a new opportunity. We want to send some
stormtroopers through the gate. Can we throw your movies out there?
It might work, it might not. I'm always just yeah, sure,
let's do it. And sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't.

(24:24):
We have to constantly be looking for it. I remember
years ago when they were like, hey, there's this thing
called toob we're not really sure about it. Do you
want to put your movies up there? Like we're one
of the first ones get in there, but we don't
know if it's going to be anything or not. I'm
just like, yes, let's do it. And now two B
is like one of our little golden geese. And so
Rumble is a great example, that's all. It's a great

(24:45):
alternative to YouTube or to me, it's a supplement. So
you've got to always be looking for ways to keep
your movies out there and keep them fresh. Most of
the movies that I that I own my own distribution
on I've made upwards of the decade or more ago,
still get those mailbox checks because I don't treat them
like their old movies. I poured my heart and soul

(25:06):
into them. I still want people to see it. So
even though it's not a new release to me, someone
who hasn't seen it before, it's a new release to them.
There's always going to be a new audience. There's always
going to be a new way to get your films
out there. And I think the days of being able
to just sign a license agreement with a distributor handle
your movie and then walk away and go focus on
other things while they go make money, I think that

(25:28):
time is over.

Speaker 2 (25:29):
Yeah, and in a good way.

Speaker 3 (25:33):
Yeah. Storytellers are taking much more active participation in how
their stories are presented.

Speaker 2 (25:40):
Yeah, which I guess can only be a good thing
in a way. Do you find as well? Then that
ties into like I feel like social media can be
quite fickle and toxic at times, and sometimes it can
be very bad. I feel a lot of influencers, a
lot of content creators out there, will jump on like
the movie bandwagon and just use it. So there's particular ones,

(26:01):
and I'm sure people will know anyway, even for me
reference in this there's certain names that seem to have
the same opinion of every single movie, and it's always
a negative one, because I think that's the one that
kind of sells online, is to have that funny negative
let me just shit on everything. But do you find
that it works the other way sometimes as well, Like
the amount of times I've seen old horror movies or

(26:22):
not even old five six, seven, eight years, I guess
get rediscovered and get this whole new audience. I'll see
things on TikTok, for example, some influencer will be like, Oh,
I saw this scary found footage movie that came out
in twenty twelve, and all of a sudden it has
one point three million likes and there's ten thousand comments
of people going, oh, I need to check it out.

Speaker 3 (26:44):
I love that, And I think that's only going to
get more. As with anything, there's going to be more
kind of the branded stuff at the top. Everything's going
to get stratified. That's how That's always how it is.
When I always find inspiration, and you can see that,
like Joe Bob on Shutter, they'll come up with a
movie that nobody ever heard of, that had its moment
in the sun in the seventies, and he's unearthing it

(27:05):
and giving it this new life. Or companies like Vinegar Syndrome,
they're just they're digging up all this stuff because these
movies are still great. It happened to myself. I signed
every Day's my film member days with rift tracks, and
they tore it apart like it deserved to be. But
it's all in good fun, and it gives that movie
this whole new life. And so I think for every

(27:28):
kind of I don't want to say sell out, but
for every big box influencer, there is going to be
that TikToker who's, oh, let me tell you about this
movie from nineteen seventy two that three people saw and
get this new life. And that's I was speaking with
my son yesterday, was low in his mind about how
old Bram Stoker's Dracula is and how old Mary Shelley's
Frankenstein is, and how there are new people reading that

(27:53):
book for the first time every day, and there's no
Hollywood trained us to not remember that's how movies are too,
But that is how movies are, and all of this
technology has made that even more pronounced. It's like the
opposite of the blockbuster effect. Yeah you kill you. You

(28:14):
have shelf space for six ten movies, and now it's
one movie that takes up almost all the shelf space
and one or two copies of the others. That time
is over.

Speaker 2 (28:25):
Yeah, true, Yeah, yeah, I could definitely see that as
regards your creative process. Then when you do you actively
sit down to write a movie or is it a
more organic thing to you? I don't know how I'm
trying to structure the question. Do you set yourself out
like a guideline of Okay, I need to write this

(28:46):
specific project or does it all just kind of happen
naturally if you're out for coffee, you're taking a walk,
you're with friends, whatever.

Speaker 3 (28:53):
Yeah, for truly, I mean there's two ways. The most
frequent way for me is, like you said, it's very organic.
I'll have a dream and by the time I write
down the dream, I've forgotten half of it, but the
part I remembered was cool, and then I fill in
that other part. Or when I will, I'll have a

(29:13):
like a scene idea, and I'll write that scene and
then I'll try to figure out why is that happening,
what happened before that, what happened after that. A lot
of times I'll see art out in the world or online,
I'll be like, oh my god, a Seal Team commando
with antlers tied to his helmet. What's that about. I'm
going to make that story. Happened to me a couple
of days ago. Now I didn't. I'm not doing anything

(29:34):
with that right now, but that's what happened. I just
saw that picture and had to write something down. And
so a lot of times that's why a lot of
my movies feel a little niche. Mashy is. It's because
I'm taking I'm having moments of inspiration that are all disconnected,
and then I'm shoving them all together and finding a
way to knit the quilt. And then when I do
commission work, or if I working with producers, because after

(29:55):
I did Jeepers Creepers Reborn, I had a little heat
and so I was able to get jobs with producers
who are like, Okay, we want a horror movie. Give
us a come up with something. And so when I
would do that, it's a little bit less organic, a
little bit more like what is the producer done before,
what are they looking for? What distributor or get they
gone for? What kind of talent are they looking for?

(30:16):
And so it's still it's it's much more jobby job,
but it's still fun.

Speaker 4 (30:22):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (30:22):
Do you find it hard then, to I suppose switch
off that creative brain, like over the last few minutes
we've talked about and obviously it's not just it's not
like it used to be. Like you said, you're not.
You can't just technically, you can't just be a writer,
you can't just be a director in nowadays, you've got
to be a mixture of nearly everything. So does that
make it more difficult than I guess to switch off?

(30:45):
And I feel this at.

Speaker 4 (30:46):
A whale lower level.

Speaker 2 (30:47):
There's times where I, like yesterday, for example, it was
a Sunday and I was like, okay, let me just
do absolutely not and I'm not gonna look at emails,
I'm not gonna look at my phone, I'm not gonna
go on social.

Speaker 4 (30:57):
Media, I'm not gonna check stuff.

Speaker 2 (30:58):
And it's always related to movies and horror and things
like that. But I'm still like, no, let me just
for a day completely, And I don't know, I find
I can't do it. It's like this thing that's just there.
It would only take five minutes to check emails, it
would only take ten minutes to look on Instagram and
see what people are doing the Rifter's any news or announcements.

Speaker 4 (31:17):
Do you find that as well?

Speaker 3 (31:19):
It is? It's I have to I forgive myself for it.
If I decide I'm gonna take a day off, inevitably
it'll be like that, like I'll just be there. I'll
be playing a video gang or video games. Really, that's
how I relax. You can turn your mind off, loathing up.
But more often than not, I something will happen. I'll
hit the pause button and I'll be over there writing

(31:41):
something down. And I used to beat myself up for that,
but I've accepted that that's just who I am. That's
how I do it all be because I've been rewarded
plenty of times where oh, you remember that idea that
I had on the day I was supposed to be
not working. That's what became this movie. And so when
the inspiration is coming, I just got to go with
it and I send to find that things balance out.

(32:02):
There's when you're self employed, there's this pressure. If you're
not working, you're not getting paid, and we'll be all
hippie dippy. But I think at some point self care
is important and you have to give yourself those breaks.
Creativity is like breathing. You have to breed out and
breathe in. But in bridging is organic and so when
it comes, you got to ride that wave. I just

(32:24):
I think creators like us that wave is pretty constant.

Speaker 4 (32:30):
Yeah, and would you find then to follow on from that?
Does that? I don't know what times spill.

Speaker 2 (32:35):
Into your your personal life without getting too into it,
but I feel like so many times I've talked to
people and myself include relationships, family, kids, friends, things like that.

Speaker 4 (32:46):
I don't know. When I look back and I've.

Speaker 2 (32:48):
Spoken to other people and they say, yeah, there has
been times where it's maybe I don't want to say
gotten unhealthy, but it starts to affect other aspects of
your life. You're trying to juggle all these things and
keep all these let's spin and keep everybody happy, keep
yourself happy, not feel burnt out. Do you find that's
the case now or maybe it was something you dealt
with and you learn to.

Speaker 3 (33:08):
Well, it's it is a definite reality when I first started.
When your mind is like that and money is flowing
and everybody's happy, it's easy or not easy, but it's easier.
It's easier to have a family, to have people in
your life because that kind of frenetic, crazy, creative thing
you have, the people in your life can see it

(33:29):
rewarding you. But when you are struggling, they don't. They
are not capable of perceiving all the little victories that
you have. When you're like, oh, I wrote the shit
out of that paragraph. You seal that, and that's good
for you and that keeps you going, But they don't
see that. So when unfortunately, when financial times are tough,
when jobs are thin on the ground, or you're laboring

(33:49):
really hard to get product out that maybe took a
twenty percent quality hit because you had to deal with
some other stuff and post the people that love you,
that are around you, they only see you getting your
ass kicked and they start to wonder, like, what are
you doing? Why are you just getting that You're ass
kicked all the time for no reward. It would be
fine if you I was a defense contractor for about

(34:11):
eight years. I quit the film industry and became a
defense contractor. Because my son was born. I was like,
all right, it's time to make money, and I kept
writing during that time. But even during that time, I
would have to leave for three months at a time,
so that was a little hard on the family. But
that hardness is made up for by the piles of

(34:32):
cash that come home. And that is not always the
case when you're doing Indie Built, where you're like, now
I'm going to go I'm going to go here for
two weeks of prep, three weeks to shoot, and a
week of wrap. But sometimes that rate isn't sufficient to
Sometimes other people on the outside might be like, really,

(34:52):
that's you make that work in a McDonald's, but come
home every night. So there is Unfortunately, in my experience,
financial whole stability is pretty directly tied with how healthy
things can be, and that I feel like that's just
the struggle of creative people. It gets easier the most
successful you are, but you also, I think, have to

(35:13):
set some ground rules for yourself and just be like, hey,
look I do this with my kids now because they're
getting older. So it's like when it's kid time, it's
kid time. Like I don't care who it is. I
don't care who it is on the phone. If it's
during kid time, you're not getting I'm not calling you back,
and you have to draw those lines. I'm sure I've
lost jobs as a result of leaving a producer hanging.

(35:37):
But you have to build those boundaries for yourself so
that you can have that life and ultimately you get
rewarded for it because things are great at home, you've
got that creative fire. We don't all have to be miserable,
tortured artists. I'm not I used to be that. I'm
not into that anymore. I don't want to be a
tortured artist.

Speaker 2 (35:55):
Do you think that that's what separates the people who
really love it from because I feel like, definitely more
recent times, to be a writer, movie director, things like that,
a producer has become like a quote unquote cool thing
that maybe younger people see on TikTok or Instagram or
somewhere and go, oh, yeah, I want to make movies.
I want to be brought around in the limousine, And

(36:17):
for majority, like the other ninety nine percent of the.

Speaker 4 (36:20):
Industry, that's not the reality.

Speaker 2 (36:22):
Like you just said, the amount of people I've spoken
to that I would have considered, Oh, financially, set never
has to worry, doesn't have to worry about mortgage or
anything like that, And then they're like, no, that couldn't
be further from the truth. It's all what We go
to Sitch's film festival and it looks great, we have
two days have been treated like royalty, and then two
days later, I'm sitting on the train station. It's rain

(36:45):
and nobody knows who I am.

Speaker 4 (36:47):
Nobody cares.

Speaker 2 (36:48):
And it's that thing of the difference between the two.
But would you say, that's what I guess separates who
sticks with us, is that actually desires.

Speaker 3 (36:56):
You're anybody can do just about anything for money. You
give me enough money, I'll do just about anything for
a job. And it's I'm not saying it's a badge
of honor when you keep doing it when you aren't
making much. But what I will say is that it's
what I was saying earlier about the little victories. So
if you have enough of those little victories, that, to me,

(37:17):
that's the stuff that keeps you going. So it's yeah,
I'm on that train platform, I'm kind of it's raining
and nobody knows who I am. But I'm a happy person.
I'm not a miserable person. I'm doing the things that
I want to do, and especially knowing what I do
about the business, I know that even after I'm dead,
there's going to be a Joe Bob unearthing my movie

(37:38):
forty years from now. And the way that things are
going now, we get seen as filmmakers more than we
used to, so people dig into the lives of those people,
and so I think we're the creators who stay in
it through the hard times. I think they're the ones
who are just getting something out of it more than money,
even though I wouldn't necessarily. I know plenty of people

(37:58):
who started in the business when I did, who have
quit and gone on to do other things. They're perfectly happy.
They made their one movie and that was their moment
and they moved on. And more power to those people
because those movies are still cool. Well, there's some people
who have no interest in doing other things. I've tried
a lot of different careers. I've had other careers. I

(38:19):
keep coming back to this one.

Speaker 2 (38:22):
It's a thing as well as I mentioned it so
many times, and I know some people might cringe at
the word when I mention things like legacy. But that's
what it is for me, and it's part of the
reason why I started to want to have conversations like this,
and a lot from I guess a selfish standpoint as well.
I care about these conversations I have, and I'm interested
in these conversations, and.

Speaker 4 (38:42):
Not just for the sake of all.

Speaker 2 (38:44):
Who's interesting this week on TikTok. Let me try and
get on their agent and see can I talk to them?
And it's that idea of that legacy that's left behind.
I have a massive bookcase on the other side of
the room that is just full of movies, and I'm
sure that there's plenty of movies that I love from
filmmakers who are long dead and buried, but it's like
that thing still exists that can never be like erased,

(39:07):
that feeling it might give me or somebody else maybe
who's having a hard time and it's their little escape.
It becomes their comfort movie, whatever it might be, and
that's for me, I guess the obviously, look, it's great
to be financially stable and be able to make a
living out of it also, but I think that's probably
like what you just said, it's that next step off

(39:28):
from it's not just about that thing of money.

Speaker 3 (39:33):
Yeah, it's to me legacy. That's not cringy at all,
that's not narcissistic or hubris. It's what humans want. I
think humans craig legacy and storytellers. Perhaps I don't know
that we're necessarily more tapped into that, but for better
or worse, storytellers who have permanent mediums like books or

(39:55):
movies or music, we have that we are. It's pretty
cool that our legacy can to be there in the
round sound with lots of colors, and I like that. Yes, yeah,
I've done other jobs where I've taken I take pride
in the fact that house exists because I I help
build it. So I think there are legacies there for everybody.
It's just ours is a whole lot more garishon in

(40:17):
your face. Yeah, if you don't have to dig so
you can find the legacy of Sir Anthony Hopkins is
everywhere you don't. Frank Lloyd Wright is an architect that
you can recognize, but there are plenty of other architects.
You have all these other buildings up that we don't
know about. So I guess for storytellers it is who
we are is a little bit more wrapped up in
what we create then maybe other professions, which I think

(40:40):
is why legacy for us is a little bit more
at the front or a little more readily available.

Speaker 2 (40:48):
Obviously, you've created and continue to create a lot of
original ideas, original concepts and stories. I'm sure a lot
of people will annoy your name. More of the casual
audience will annoy your name. True being connected with cheaper screepers?

Speaker 4 (41:02):
How did that come about?

Speaker 2 (41:03):
That progression through like indie filmmaking to then obviously a
lot of people in an outside of the horror community
would see jeepers. Creepers is one of those like staple ips.
So how does that come about? Is that something that
you actively wrote a story off your own back and
pitched it or did somebody contact you and say, look,

(41:24):
we want to bring this back.

Speaker 3 (41:26):
Yeah, that one was. That was a really messy play.
It was so I wrote a book when I was
a contractor called Necrospace, and it got picked up by
a friend of mine who was a producer, and ultimately
we ended up making a six episode TV series called
Salvage Marines. And while we were on the set of
Salvage Marines in Louisiana. One of the producers owned this

(41:48):
like film studio that we were shooting at and they
had done Jeepers Creepers three there, and I, of course
I met him in the context of I'm the writer
for this space marine show or one of the two
writers with Rofield, and when I found out he was
doing Jeepers Screepers Reborn, I was just very bluck with him.
I was just like, Hey, I'm a kind of a
crazy fan of this this IP, and I would love

(42:12):
to get this out of the hands of the guy
who made it and get this this ip ought to
be separated from the guy who made it. It would
be great to do this, and I pounded that dude.
Six weeks. I brought it up. Basically every day we
were shooting souta dreams, I would be like, Hey, so
jeep Screepers, what are we doing? And eventually I think

(42:33):
halfway because I think I was I did good work.
I think also maybe just to get me to leave
them alone, he was like, here's what we want. And
it was the weirdest. It was my first commission job
where basically they just handed me like a piece of
paper that had ten or eleven bullet points on it.
They were like, we want the movie to have all
these things. Find a way to make all this make sense.

(42:53):
And then yeah, we did ten drafts or so and
then pass that over to Timo. We did his directors pass.
So the script that made it to the screen is
not one hundred percent what I wrote, but it's enough
of what I wrote. When I take.

Speaker 2 (43:07):
It, was there like, obviously you said that you're a
big fan, much like myself, of that of that character
and of that story, even though you wanted to be involved,
was there ever a fear and we don't have to
get too into I'm sure everybody knows the backstory of
what you're talking about there, But was there ever then

(43:27):
a fear of, Okay, we're getting involved in this and
everybody continually ties it to I get exactly what you mean.
It's like we need to separate that particular artist or
whatever from the art. But then there's a lot of
people out there who still probably will draw those lines.

Speaker 3 (43:46):
For me. At that time, like I said, I was
an indie guy and Salvage Rings was my first big project.
Even though in the grand scheme it's is pretty small,
but I basically I was like, look, I don't have
a career to lose. I'm so far on the outer
edges of fringe indie film. I don't have an eight.
It's gonna drop me. I don't have a studio deal.

(44:07):
It's dangerous. I really see myself as having anything to lose,
and I'm try I'm a pretty resilient person when it
comes to dealing with negative media, and I'd had some
experience doing that before. Yeah, for me, it was just like,
I'm having so much fun getting to be part of,
like you said, legacy, getting to be part of the
jeepers creepers thing. And I was just like, yeah, I

(44:27):
was worried about it and I didn't feel like I
had anything to lose.

Speaker 2 (44:31):
Is there other eyeps out there that you like would
have in your head? Is it something that you would
do again? Would you like to? I swear yeah, dabbling
exists in EPs, and is there particular ones that, like,
I don't know spring to mind.

Speaker 3 (44:45):
I like remakes when they're done right. I know it's
it sounds a little obscure, but I would actually love
to make another transfers movie. That's a good Thinkers is amazing,
But really, any of that IP I love trying to
I like the challenge of trying to pay appropriate honor
to the thing you're remaking, but you're also you're trying

(45:07):
to do your own thing. And I think it's it's
really hard to please existing fans and make a remake
and put your own creative spin on it, because so
often updating it for modern audiences or rewriting it for
this or that, you never know what the studios are
going to want you to do. But to me, just

(45:28):
as a writer, that's all just like a lovely challenge.
So if I really any of them, any of the
big horror ips I got a shot at, I would
It'd be fun. It's a great challenge. It's a way
to respect the original material and this neat challenge of
writing inside a box that you're having to build at
the same time.

Speaker 4 (45:50):
Are you a subscriber to the saying?

Speaker 2 (45:53):
And I've heard it a few times from a few
different people, and I think there's a I've heard varying
opinions on the same of this, the idea of one
for me, one for the studio, if you know what
I mean, as in the sense of sometimes maybe I
have to take on this project to allow me to
get to my next thing that I'm really excited about.

Speaker 3 (46:17):
I don't think i've experienced that yet. I'm usually so
grateful for work. But even even jeepish Revious is a
good example. A lot of the stuff that they wanted
me to do in that movie I didn't agree with,
or I didn't I wasn't one hundred percent sure it
was going to work, and so it's not the script
I would have written if I had just been given
carte blanche to redo Jeeper's Crevious. But even within those

(46:40):
so one might call it selling out that I was like,
I'm not you gave me this list of twelve things.
I only think three of them are good. But I
still took the job and still went on the journey
because I do love the craft so much and it
is a good paycheck and it's still fun, and I
think that's the thing. So that, yes, there is. If
I was in to do one for me, one for
the studio, I don't know that would apply to me

(47:03):
because complicated sense of instructions, those weird things that I
would never write on my own. That's just a cool challenge.
I'm a horror guy. But if somebody who hired me
to write a romantic comedy, I would take that in
a heartbeat, because that just sound. It's a fun challenge. Yeah,

(47:24):
I don't think. I think when you love it this much,
I don't think. I don't think you can really sell out.

Speaker 4 (47:28):
It makes sense.

Speaker 2 (47:29):
It's just I've heard that, and I'm always curious to
hear different people's perspective on that. Is there an I
guess living day past, present, creator, director, writer, actor, whoever
it might be that you would love to work with.

Speaker 3 (47:45):
I pronounced his name wrong every time, even though I try,
But it's Temore ten men cough. He did night Watch,
day Watch and wanted. He's a Russian filmmaker and I
just I love his He adapted some pretty popular Russian
vampire novels into these two movies. And what I really

(48:06):
liked about him is he was able to bridge that
Russian cultural filmmaking and get it over and make something
that Americans would enjoy. That's why I think day Watch
is so cool. But because those films, I was watching
those around the time I started as a filmmaker, and
they just that those films have always stuck with and
I got to work for a guy on Salvage Marines

(48:27):
who had been a camera operator for Teamers, So I
was like, all right on one step close.

Speaker 2 (48:33):
When it comes to indie filmmaking, and especially within herror,
what would you say is key to do you ever
think about it outside of the I guess the creative aspect.
I heard someone referenced they always feel like they have
to keep in mind when they're writing a story or
coming up with a character or whatever that Okay, at
a certain point, I'm going to have to look at
this from the perspective of is this somewhat commercial?

Speaker 4 (48:53):
Do I have certain things inside.

Speaker 2 (48:56):
Of this story or this world that if I show
it to somebody who maybe is outside of the genre,
but maybe they're financially there or whatever, that they'll get
us and go, Okay, Yeah, you've got this beat, and
you've got that cool character, and you've got something we
can work with for maybe posters and marketing and things
like that.

Speaker 3 (49:14):
I think I've done so many of those jobs in
the past that I think, for better or worse, I
hope better. I've incorporated a lot of that into my
own writing because I've been I've been a gig guy,
on different productions. I've done so much production work, so
much sales, so much marketing, as well as directing, producing,
acting stunts. I've done all. I've done all of it

(49:37):
to some degree or another. So I do think about
that stuff when i'm writing. The only times when I
turn that off is if I'm being specifically told budget
is no option, there's no object, and that will change
my writing style a little bit, because then I'll be like, oh,
of course we're going to blow everything up now. But
I think I've got enough of that incorporated into my

(49:57):
writing style that I don't really have to think about
it too much.

Speaker 2 (50:03):
Do you have any comfort horror movies or movies do
you find yourself revisit more often than others. I don't
like asking for favorites because I feel like that's quite
a difficult question. So it doesn't even have to be favorites,
but maybe.

Speaker 3 (50:15):
Comfort, Yeah, Well, like movies that that I will leah,
if you just want as like a cup of hot
chocolate or something you just want to like, well, I
often will go back to Brotherhead of the Wolf, Oh wow,
because it's it's my favorite movie of all time. I
never get tired of it, like I just watch it
over and over, but that one and the tremors of

(50:37):
all things like tremors, like that's a that's an easy
why you're like, I'm just gonna sit down and have
sandwich to watch tremors. You just never get tired of it.
I think those, I think everybody's got those, and those
are important to have where you're just like, it doesn't
I've seen Didn't Tell Washington with a cigarette at the
end of Falling. You know, I know it's coming, but
I'm always so just scanzed up when when that moment

(50:59):
hits in that movie. Yeah, And I think everybody's got
those where you're just like a couple of films where
you'll just I could watch it a thousand times and
never guitar.

Speaker 2 (51:08):
More recently, I've been thinking about that more and more,
the idea of comfort movies and stuff like that. And
I remember when I first started doing this, and I
would ask somebody about something like that, and I could
tell that they were not offended by the question, but
offended more maybe by the idea of what do you
mean by comfort movie, Like it's a bad movie that

(51:30):
I like or And I think now it's come around
to I would say, I think if I was a filmmaker,
I would rather my movies be considered a comfort movie
for people than maybe it wins a ton of awards,
everyone talks about it for two months and then that's it.
Then it doesn't have a life after that, it just disappears.
The amount of horror movies like that I adore and love,

(51:52):
and a lot of people would class them as that's
not a good movie or whatever, but there's a.

Speaker 4 (51:56):
Cult following behind us.

Speaker 3 (51:58):
Yeah, I wouldn't really rather that.

Speaker 4 (51:59):
I think as a filmmaker.

Speaker 3 (52:01):
Same if someone was like, all right, Sean, would you
rather be the guy that made Apocalypse Now or Predator?
I would say Predator because it's so rewatchable. And I
see what you're saying, because I think a lot of
people that in the beginning, they want to make that
movie that just blows the doors off hinges, and that's great,
and there are those movies out there, but sometimes I'm
not necessarily going to watch them over and over. Those

(52:23):
movies that you that you just watch over and over,
I'd rather make those. Yeah.

Speaker 4 (52:27):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (52:28):
A lot of people are making a big thing of
the Substance recently, with it's being nominated for awards being
talked about so much in other mainstream avenues that horror
is normally not privy.

Speaker 3 (52:39):
To or considered in.

Speaker 2 (52:41):
Do you think that this will change anything about how
the genre is perceived or is it just another one
of those flash in the pan and the machine will
just go back to the way it always was.

Speaker 3 (52:53):
Yeah, I have a feeling like the machine is going
to do what it's gonna do a substance. It's a
great movie, and I'm really glad to see that it
broke out of the genre. I was able to get
into mainstream a bit terrifier three, the fact that it
just cleaned up at movie theaters. And yet, so what
will happen is because of the substance, Because of terrifier distribution,
companies are going to vacuum up a whole bunch of

(53:15):
horror content. But then they're going to do exactly what
we talked about before. They're just gonna dump it out
there and then wonder why it didn't why none of
them succeeded like terrifying, because they're not going to do
the thing that Damian Leoni and his producers and his
distributors did Cineverse did to make that a phenomenon project.
So I think as a genre, we're gonna go to

(53:37):
keep doing what we've been doing. We get along fine,
not being not being very mainstream, We get along fine
doing our thing. Every now and then a terrifier or
a substance will come out and we get we get
our moment, but then it bubbles back down. But I
think that's maybe not the worst.

Speaker 4 (53:54):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (53:54):
I feel like people were getting maybe a little bit
too ahead of themselves, thinking the amount of people I
talked too recently that seem to think that this is
going to create some like different Oh, horror is not
going to be the red headed stepchild anymore because the
substance won awards are because terrifier or because long Legs
last year made so much money. And I'm like, I
still just don't know if that is the case. Why,

(54:16):
in your opinion do you think big time studios and
things like that still It's so strange to me because
in one sense, they use it as like a guarantee
for money, because they know with the right idea, with
the right market, they can make a colossal amount of
money for maybe five ten million dollar budget, and they

(54:38):
have these long lives afterwards and people buy all the
T shirts and the march and this and that. You
don't get that with comedy movies or romantic comedies or
anything like that anymore. Why do you think though it's
still seen as like the ikey don't really want to be.

Speaker 3 (54:53):
Yeah, I'm gonna use, I'll take. So there's a dig
there's a difference between murder and war. So if I
watch a rainbow movie and fifty people get killed, that's
one kind of movie. That's one kind of death and violence.
I watch Art the Clown Chainsaw fifty people, it's a

(55:15):
totally different movie. So it's all still violence. But there
is this darker edge to horror that you don't get
in action movies, war movies, anything like that. And so
I think, even no matter how successful any single horror
film does, by its nature, it's on the it's on

(55:36):
the it's on the shadow side, it's on the other
side of the tree. There's shadows, there's darkness. So I think,
by its nature, horror is always going to be this
fringe edge thing. But I think that's natural and good.
I guess that the by nature it can't be mainstream
because it still we are still exploring dark things and I.

(55:58):
And the reason I wanted to draw that specific difference
between an action movie or a war movie and a
horror movie is the it's not just that people are
getting killed on screen or whatever. It's there's a darkness
to this over to what we do in the horror
world versus what you're going to see in adjacent state
the action movie yourself. Even though it's still violence, it's

(56:19):
still very different. So I think, yeah, just by its
by its nature, horror belongs on the other side of
the campfire.

Speaker 4 (56:27):
Yeah, yeah, that's true.

Speaker 2 (56:28):
I never looked at it like that, but yeah, you're
right in the sense of it's like the same but different.

Speaker 3 (56:33):
Yeah, it's and it's in its proper place that's where
you want it. True.

Speaker 2 (56:37):
So going forward, then, you mentioned earlier about the hoodoos,
and I kind of want to touch on it. I
don't know how much you can say or and not say,
but if there is anything that you can say or
maybe in Layman's terms, give people a little bit of
an idea of what to expect from that. Because instantly
when I seen the name, I was like, Okay, that's
peaked my interest. And then I seen some of the
artwork and I was like, Okay, that's definitely peaked my interest,

(56:58):
and then it's.

Speaker 4 (56:59):
A little bit mysteriou So I was like, in my head,
I've been like making up what I think.

Speaker 2 (57:05):
So I'm interested to see, like what actually is in
basic term is what can people expect?

Speaker 3 (57:10):
So who doos? It's gonna be a weird one. But
I feel like when you commit as a filmmaker, when
you just fully embrace the madness, and it creates a
bubble in which everybody can be like, oh, okay, we're
doing this all right, and then we go from that
ride because essentially it is a one part guy Ritchie
heist movie, but it's it's got animated. We had a

(57:33):
lot of puppets, We had bun Rocky style booty dolls
that come to life and kill everybody, So you get, yeah,
you have it's like a heist movie. Then it meets
like this kind of twisted toy demonic toys vibe, very
Charles Band full Moon style booty dolls that wake up
and start killing everybody. So has this almost like a
Scooby Doo feeling, really adult Scooby Doo feeling.

Speaker 4 (57:56):
That was the vibe I got instantly.

Speaker 2 (57:57):
I was like I don't know why, but it was
like this, give me some kind of Scooby Doo.

Speaker 3 (58:01):
Oh. Absolutely to the point that we have, but again
I don't want to spoil too much. We have there's
a thing called the Hudoo HQ. That is, it's the
van that my character lives inside. He's a guy literally
living in a van, and he's like a huckster, kind
of shitty fortune teller gets roped into the scheme. There's
like voodoo gangsters. But we even to the way we've

(58:22):
felled it and the way the we're color grading it.
There's a lot we're using the power of flashlights a lot,
like everything's foggy, so it really we really dug our
heels into the the R rated adult Scooby Doo vibe.
You've got your hest crew. So they're in a van.
It's it's very much got that, and we play it
like you said the poor comedies. We play it pretty straight.

(58:43):
So we're like, yep, moody dolls run around kill people
and that's happening.

Speaker 2 (58:48):
So looking forward then specifically to that and then on
from that for the rest of we're only at the
start of twenty twenty five. Ready, what does the rest
of this year look like for you? And I suppose
where can people keep up today or or support your work?

Speaker 3 (59:02):
What I've got coming up next, current title is Feral Hint,
and it's simply a horror western. There's gonna be, there's
a monster, there's evil clowns, a lot of bear traps,
barbed wired six shooters. It's yeah, it's gonna be. It's
a pretty action packed script. But again it takes those
kind of mash kind of crazy elements and puts them

(59:24):
together and plays it really straight, like, of course there's
a bunch of weirdog clowns living in the swamp, and
of course there's there's these monsters, and of course there
are bounty hunters that track them and trap them. Here
we go after that. I'm one of those guys that
has a thousand things that develop it. Hopefully i'll get
that cut. Before we got ten different scripts with different
producers just waiting for the call. And so right now

(59:47):
this western is the last thing I have that's my
own thing, and then yeah, after that, we'll see what happens.
And as far as keeping up with me in my work,
I have a pretty unique name, so you can pretty much.
Type that into any social media platform or search engine
and you'll get somebody who loves me or hates me.
And I'm on most of my work is on most
three meat platforms. I'm trying to get better at using

(01:00:07):
social media. I'm I am. I'm forty six, so I
didn't have that until recently. Sin It's not necessarily part
of my second nature to to be online so much. Yeah,
I'm pretty pretty easy to find for.

Speaker 2 (01:00:20):
Everybody listening, whether you're looking at the video aspect or
on audio platforms. The links to all the Shan stuff
will be down below in the description anyway, so you
can once you're finished this, just go into the description.
You'll find all the links to all his social media
is where his work is in different regions, and things
like that. Final question and before I let you go
today is why horror and what does it mean to you?

Speaker 1 (01:00:41):
Like?

Speaker 4 (01:00:41):
Why do you I suppose it's.

Speaker 2 (01:00:43):
Probably like a double edged question in a way of
why do you keep going back as both a fan
but then also creatively? What is it that draws you
back to maybe the darker aspects of storytelling?

Speaker 3 (01:00:55):
I think it is what I was saying earlier. It
is that orror is that genre that's on the other
side of the campfire. And I like being tested as
a fan. I like being tested. I like being scared,
and I think conflict, suffering, hard times, monsters all that
those are forces that push us as people. They push

(01:01:17):
us as humans. You could take that all the way
back to like cavement, lighting fires and with spears and
you're looking out into the darkness. I love exploring that
as a fan and as a creator because for me,
that's where the that's where the pay dirt is. Yeah.
I don't know, I just some people are I think
some people are built for it. Some people are built

(01:01:37):
for different genres. But that's always where I want to go.
I always want to I always want to make it
a little darker, a little scarier, a little harder, because
that's what that pushes us as people, pushes us as
a species. Yeah. I mean, I can get all Nicktage
and talk about modern shamanism or whatever, but I really
see it as as creators and as fans. We go
and we sit on the other side of the campfire

(01:01:59):
where the shadows are dark deeper, and we spend some
time there, and then we come back back to the
other side, and that's I like doing that as a fan,
and I like doing that as a creator. It just
I think it's just what I'm here to do, and it's.

Speaker 4 (01:02:13):
For me as well.

Speaker 2 (01:02:14):
From having all these conversations and talking to so many
different people, I just feel like it's the most open.

Speaker 4 (01:02:19):
Sandbox you can.

Speaker 2 (01:02:20):
You can tie it into anything, any feeling, any emotion,
any anything, and it can be quite a I don't know,
I think for people maybe outside of it, when they
get exposed to it, it's quite like exhilarate and experience
to maybe get scared and then laugh about it and
not really know how you feel, but then to you know,
after ninety minutes, after one hundred and twenty minutes, survive
the experience, to come out and go that I feel

(01:02:41):
really good now, like.

Speaker 3 (01:02:42):
I've I've experienced the unknown, I've gone over, I've gone
to the other side and have come back and entertained.
But I'm also a little stronger, a little wiser, a
little more thankful for what I have. Maybe I learned
something that's that's it, or is inherently a growth experience.

Speaker 2 (01:02:57):
Yeah, it really is, Sean, this has been a pleasure.
I wish you all the best three upcoming year. I
can't wait to see some of these projects when they
come out, and I would definitely love to revisit again
at some point if you'll have us again.

Speaker 3 (01:03:08):
This was fun. Thank you. I appreciate that.

Speaker 2 (01:03:11):
And like I said, everybody, the links to all the
shan stuff will be down below in descriptions. And yeah,
we'll catch you in the next episode.

Speaker 3 (01:03:16):
All right, I'll be well. Thank you.

Speaker 1 (01:03:23):
Thanks for listening to another episode of Class Horror Cast.
Stop the CHC podcast at classharror cast dot com at
first Class Horror, on Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube, or on
Twitter at Class Underscore Horror. The CC podcast is hosted
and produced by Aaron Doyle and is

Speaker 3 (01:03:42):
An fch production.