Writing Horror History: John Harrison on Romero, Creepshow & Cult Classics

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
You can run, but you can't guide from the class
hard cast. Hunting 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, Hunterer the Theater of
the Man. Enjoy the show.

Speaker 2 (00:24):
John, Welcome to the show. It's a pleasure and honor
to have you on. How are you doing today, sir,
I'm doing great.

Speaker 3 (00:30):
I was a little startled by those swords coming through
the screen at me.

Speaker 4 (00:34):
Why I've been told that more than once.

Speaker 3 (00:36):
That's a that's a great that's a great opening.

Speaker 2 (00:39):
I was like, Oh, and speaking of great opening, I
always like to go back to the start when I
speak to somebody. Can you remember your first experience with
the horror genre as a as a viewer, maybe as
a kid or growing up? Do you remember I don't know,
an experience that sticks out was like quite pivotal.

Speaker 3 (00:59):
Yeah, there were two, actually actually more than two, but
the ones that really I could call up right away.
Where I lived when I was growing up was Pittsburgh,
Pennsylvania in the US, and it was back at a
time where you know, the parents would just say get

(01:19):
out of the house and go do something, and it
was easy to just wander around. And we lived in
a section of the city in the east end called Oakland,
and there was a great movie theater, a couple of
great movie theaters down there, and so one of the
ways we could be on our own was to go
to the movies. And it was cheap enough so that
we could for a few coins get into the theater.

(01:41):
So I remember several movies that that we were allowed
to see, or maybe we weren't, but we went anyway.
And the ones that stood out and really had an
effect on me were, first of all, a movie called
Forbidden Planets, the great sort of sci fi classic that

(02:07):
MGM put out with Disney. And of course it wasn't
a horror movie it was it was a space odyssey.
But the theme of it, even for a kid at
eleven years old, the thing of monsters from the end,
made such an impact on me. When I thought about it,
I didn't really understand it, but I knew viscerally that

(02:30):
it was, oh, there's something inside of me that could
be crazy. And then of course the monster itself when
it when it hit those beams and at the Life.
It was scary as hell. The other one that really
broke me crazy was The Haunting by Robert Wise Black

(02:53):
and White. I guess you'd call it a haunted house tail,
but it's really a psychological thriller. And those two had
a profound effect on me. And the I guess you'd
say the third one that I saw in the movie Theater,
which I thought was more of a goof than than
something terrifying. Although my brother and I went, he was

(03:14):
a little younger than me and he couldn't fit through.
It was The Blob, which Steve McQueen, Yeah, all those
all those William Castle movies, The Tingler, not the Blob
that was not his, but those those kinds of movies
that we went to see when we were kids. Really,
and then, of course in Pittsburgh we had a wonderful

(03:34):
late night horror television show called Chiller Here, which was
hosted by the inimitable Bill Cardill, who was a friend
of mine, and Georgia Merrow. Every Friday night, it was
the greatest date night you could have. Man, go back

(03:55):
home with your girlfriend Bernond Schiller Theater at eleven o'clock
parent you'd be asleep and you'd see these incredible movies.
And Bill paid a lot of attention to the vow
Luton horror of the forties, which I just adore, Cat People, Bedlam,

(04:23):
the Seventh the CEO, although not Seventh CEM, but the
The bab Has Escape Me. But all of those val
Luton horror movies directed by Jacques just fabulous, fabulous were
They had an impact on me. I made a whole
career staying in that space.

Speaker 2 (04:44):
At what point, then, in growing up and becoming a
teen and later in life, did you take it serious
where you were like, you know what, this isn't just
something I enjoyed, this is also a space that I
would like to be in professionally.

Speaker 3 (05:00):
I don't know that that was a conscious decision, Aaron,
because I went to a school called Emerson College here
in the US and studied dramatic dramatics acting. I was
a musician for a long time, and so my kind
of professional life was bifurcate between drama and music. But

(05:25):
when I was on the road as a musician for
a while and when that band fell apart, I came
back to Pittsburgh, my hometown, and at that time it
was a great place to be if you wanted to
be in filmmaking. There weren't any independent film There was
no Weinstein Company, there was no The Sunny Classics or

(05:46):
anything like that. But there were people like Georgia merrow
Route and I had seen Knight of the Living Dead
when I was in school in Boston, and I said,
I got to meet this guy. And I was lucky enough.
My partners and I, Dusty Nelson and Pat Bubba, the editor.
Pat Bubba had a small production company in Pittsburgh and

(06:08):
we were doing commercials and industrials, and we found out
that George had uh these sports documents he's believed it
or not that he was going to do. We called
him up and he came over to see our stuff
and we started working together. And so that really my
relationship with George was where it became a professional endeavor.

(06:30):
And that was that.

Speaker 2 (06:32):
Was that just solely down to working with a guy
like him. Was it conversations that you guys had, was
at the business relationship that made it more evident to
you maybe this is the perfect transition for me.

Speaker 3 (06:48):
Probably all of the above. And we became really good friends,
and so we hung out and we would with our
with our girlfriends and wives, and then they come over
to each other's houses and drink a lot of booboos
and talk quote about movies and what we really dug
and then of course working on it and George at
that time was making movies, and my partners and I,

(07:14):
when we still had our company, looked at that and said, look,
if he can do it, there must be a way
we could do it. And so we went out and
raised basically a micro world budget of funds to make
our first film, which was called Effects e F FECTF
and Dusty Nelson wrote and directed at cut it, Pat

(07:36):
booble Cup I produced it and was in it. And
because I had the piano, I did the music. That
was one of those things was really bespoke. Let's just
make it up as we go, and that started the
perfect look at we can this is a way we
can do what we love and actually make a living.

Speaker 2 (07:56):
You mentioned Effects. Was it crazy for you to see
American genre film? Eric, I've bring that back. I remember,
I'm not fire from Dublin in Ireland. Here, I'm going
to some of the some of the stores here like
Tower Records and things like that that we carry that

(08:17):
still carry physical media, and like seeing these giant stands
with effects on them all these years later, is that like,
how does that feel to make a project like that
all those years ago and then to see it come
back out and people actually really dig it and want
the physical copy.

Speaker 3 (08:36):
Yeah, it's fantastic. For a long time, it had a
very brief theatrical run when it came out, and the distributor,
unfortunately that we made a deal with typical story with
a low budget, indeed, soilm We didn't have much control
over it. It was not handled right. They sold it
as a splasher movie and it really isn't a blasher movie.

(08:59):
They put it in drive in movies with Disney movies,
and it was kind of like, oh my god, people
think when they see this as a second bill. So
it really had a terrible first life, and for a
long time it just l People would come up to
me and say, whatever happened to it? It was? It
took on this kind of cult baptist Uh. Finally a

(09:22):
small company in Detroit put it out on DVDs and
apps films, and that kind of brought it back to
everybody's attention because now it was available again. You could
actually get it on a DVD. And then a few
years later, out of the clear blue, Josiemba calls me
for Magfa and he said, hey, we found our Our

(09:45):
boss is a collector and he goes around, He goes
around the warehouses and he buys everything in the warehouse
looking for movies and prints and stuff, and he found
one of the only thirty five millimeters prince of effects
left in the world. And we have looked at this

(10:05):
thing and we love it and we want to put
it out? Are you okay with that? And so they did.
So here we are like twenty ten or whatever it was,
twenty twelve. This movie that is thirty some years old
now has this whole new audience. Dusty and Pat and
I would sit around just be gobsmacked. Oh, I mean,

(10:28):
what could be better than all this movie we put blood,
sweat and tears in back in the day, all of
a sudden has this new lives.

Speaker 2 (10:36):
There is something else I wanted to ask you about,
speaking of I don't know, lost films or lost work
or whatever. And that's a scary Tales night elevator.

Speaker 3 (10:45):
Oh how did you find out about that? So?

Speaker 2 (10:49):
I right, So I tried really hard, like really really hard.
I I've done quite a bit of digging to try
and find information about this. I did at one stage
think that I had some weird Spanish dub that I
had found, but it turns out that it had been
taken down or I don't know what happened to that.

Speaker 4 (11:11):
I did find out that it had.

Speaker 2 (11:12):
Aired, I think in October orly November, in like nineteen
eighty six. I think only one or two stations aired US,
and I couldn't find any trace outside of the original
broadcast window. But I did find out that it aired
one time on a station in Tampa, Florida, in October

(11:32):
of nineteen eighty seven, but other than that, I literally
couldn't find out anything about it.

Speaker 3 (11:40):
Okay. So I was directing seasons of Tales from the
Dark Side of the TV show and one of the
producers came to me and he wanted to do a
spinoff called Scary Tales, and he had a script which
needed some work, but it was interesting and he was

(12:08):
called the Night Elemator, and I thought it had some
really cool elements to it, and so I said, yeah,
I'll direct it. Because he knew me from all my
work on Dark Snide. He was one of the producers,
so we put it together. But there was a conflict

(12:30):
between that producer and the main producer of Tails from
the Dark Side. It was Richard Rubinstein, who's another friend
of mine.

Speaker 2 (12:42):
And.

Speaker 3 (12:44):
I just think that it got buried in either not
so much competition between the two of them, but the
producer in LA that created Scary Tales couldn't sell it
as a series and so it just never aired anywhere.
I think he tried that it was going to be

(13:05):
a syndicated show, and so he was going to have
to make a deal not with a network but with
Burns with sales to take it around to sell it.
And that's probably why it showed up on those two
floors stations that you that you mentioned. But I never
saw it on the air. It was a good show.

(13:26):
I thought it was a good pilot, didn't go anywhere.

Speaker 2 (13:30):
It's interesting because, and I don't know how true some
of this stuff is.

Speaker 4 (13:33):
I couldn't find the.

Speaker 2 (13:37):
Where these things were cited from what I had seen
that suppose he does an interview with with Tom Savigni,
and he said he considered the Tales from the Dark
Side movie to essentially be like an unofficial creep Creep
Show three, there was the Cat from Hell apparently that

(14:01):
story they were originally floating that around from maybe Creepshow too.
There was originally supposed to be a sequel to your
Tales from the Dark Sides movie.

Speaker 4 (14:10):
What do you think?

Speaker 2 (14:11):
It was about the time that there was a lot
of these kind of anthology storytelling and people seem to
really dig that both creatively and then the audience members
seemed to eat that up as well and love that idea.

Speaker 3 (14:27):
From a creator point of view, it was fantastic because
if you had an anthology, whether it was the TV
show like Tales from the Dark soiund I don't forget.
Shows like Twilight Zone and Outer Limits and things like
that were hugely and they I think people liked the format.
They knew overall what they were going to get with

(14:47):
the Twilight Zone or the Outer Limits or Tales from
the Dark Side amazing stories. The overall concept told you
what you were going to get, like you got a
different story every week. So for me, for example, doing
Tales from the Dark Side, it was like making a
mini movie every week, which is fantastic because you weren't

(15:11):
just doing the same thing on the same set with
the same characters. You were creating a little, small short
movie and you could really buy especially with these low
budget and I believe me Tales from the Dark Side
was low budget. You could do pretty much anything as
long as it played. The producer just wanted something that

(15:34):
would be on screen and if you love the genre
and put in some good special effects and would be acceptable.
So Richard Rubinstein, who was the producer of Tales from
the Dark Side TV show, he George really brought it
back with Creep Show when he and Steve did Creep Show,
and that was so successful. It was obvious that people

(15:57):
would like this format, and Richard sold the television show
and that success actually spawned I think it inspired Spielberg
to do amazing stories. It certainly inspired dark Castle to
do what they forget what they call it back then,
but Tales from the Crypt which came out in the

(16:18):
nineties after Tales from the Dark sign So it was
obvious that people really loved anthologies. But I will tell
you this, it's a very tough sell to the money people.
George and I had several ideas for other anthologies, and
we couldn't get arrested in La. It was just, oh,

(16:39):
it's an anthology. No, I don't know, we don't want anthologies.
I think there's a time where people really accept it.
Now today he got Black Mirror. Trying to think of
what else is out there now that we just did
the Creepshow TV series again I did and four stations

(17:01):
of that, and so there's a market for It's just
a tough sell.

Speaker 2 (17:08):
It's a strange one to me because I feel like
they went away after after that time period that was
like it felt like the Golden Era, and then they
went away for a long time, and sporadically we saw
movies try to replicate that.

Speaker 3 (17:20):
The ABC's of.

Speaker 2 (17:21):
Death and these different anthology movies tried to bring ye.
And now you mentioned things like Black Mirror. I don't
know if you've ever heard of it. There's a there's
a British TV show called Inside Number nine which also
does the same thing.

Speaker 3 (17:37):
That I haven't seen it. Is it good?

Speaker 2 (17:38):
Yeah, it's very good, and it reminds me of a
lot of your guys work back then more than I
think any show. And maybe I'm wrong with this, but
is the market maybe not open again for that format?
Considering I don't I don't know what your opinions are
on this, but I think people seem to have a
shorter attention span now, and like even watching a thirty

(18:01):
second TikTok video is like too much for people. Would
would they not be inviting the antology kind of thing back?
Maybe is that why Black Mirror does so well, because
you can spend forty minutes on a story and then
move to the next episode and I don't have to
remember what happened previous.

Speaker 3 (18:18):
I'd make that argument, but I don't know that anybody
would listen. It's a rare thing. I think Charlie's Black
Mirror is successful because historic dying is so strong, and
it also was that first episode with the pig was like, Okay,

(18:39):
it's that's what this show is, man, There's going to
be an audience sport. It is so out there. But
obviously he has found a niche because at least this
latest season and even the earlier ones, he really has
tapped into a fear or panoia about technology and what happened.

(19:00):
So I think it's I don't know, it's hard to say. Uh.
There has been talk to head only about redoing Tales
from the Dark style creep show had its run on
Shutter and a MC, but I don't think we're doing anymore.
So I don't know. It's it's really hard. I think

(19:20):
it would have to have a kind of unique, uh
storytelling premise, kind of like what Rod Sterling had when
he did Swilight its own, when Charlie Wooker has with
Black Mirror. Those things are unique. It's not just the
same old stuff that is being recycled again. So I

(19:43):
think that would have to be the basis of any
kind of success. I just don't know whether the marketplaces
is ready for it. It's it's a conundrum because it's
a The other thing about that period, Aaron, was that
when you looked at those shows, because they were a

(20:06):
different story every week, and they had different writers and
different directors, all of them were a lot A lot
of them anyway, were young directors that were up and
coming and so forth. Like I was, there was an
energy to those shows and a passion for what the
storytelling was that really came through. So even if they
were low budget and even if they had some kind

(20:28):
of like funky special effects, they were still great because
the energy behind them was so strong and the passion
for doing it and making them bottom and cool and
scary was all there on the screen.

Speaker 2 (20:43):
You mentioned I seen in a previous interview Wes Craven's
Nightmare Cafe, and yeah, I had seen. You said it
was a pity that that show only got one season?
What was it about? Because I don't think after I
don't think the interviewer I should have clarified why you
said that. But I was just interested in what was

(21:05):
it about that project that makes you say it was
a shame that we didn't see more of that.

Speaker 3 (21:11):
I love the premise the the two people are trapped
in this dire and at first they don't even know
that they're dead, but once they do, they they become
medium mediums for helping people in the real world come

(21:34):
to grips with the trauma on their own lives. And
I thought that it had it could go so many places,
had a great cast, it had Wes as the as
the show runner, and I just thought it could be

(21:55):
it could be very successful because again, even though it
was a true anthology, because it did have a recurry
cast understanding sense, the stories felt singular and so it
hadn't a mix of both, and it had all the

(22:19):
things that I kind of liked a bit of supernatural,
a bit of horror. Oh yeah, I would have loved
to see that go on, and there wasn't anything really
like it on television at the time, so but it
just didn't hit.

Speaker 2 (22:35):
Yeah, it's it's strange to me, and I don't know.
Sometimes I think this question comes across a little bit weird.

Speaker 3 (22:43):
It's a.

Speaker 2 (22:44):
I don't know, like I'm trying to elicit some sort
of response, but I'm always intrigued. But you mentioned that
the passion, the effort, the energy that went into some
of those projects, and I think that's probably why as
an audience member, when you look at it without maybe
even if you don't really that's what keeps bringing you
back to be talking about some of this work that's

(23:05):
party odd years old and the audience still feel as
energetic about it as they did back then. Is that
the difference in some of the projects now it's like
an oversaturation where people maybe make things for the sake
of making things.

Speaker 3 (23:22):
Yeah. Look, I think it's obvious when you go to
the theater and you see something that has an identity,
that has a style, that has a passion in the filmmaking,
it's obvious. I don't want to knock other films and
so forth, but I just don't know how you can

(23:43):
convey that same kind of passion and energy on the
seventh Marvel movie. It's just after a while, it's okay,
I know the formula, I know the characters, I know
what's going to happen, so there's no surprise to it. Okay,
that effect is a little bit cooler than the one before. Yes,

(24:03):
we've gotten the technology to be a little bit better.
But I'll tell you what, I'd rather watched some of
the nineteen fifties R movies in their grummy little special
effects than some of these huge extravaganzas which are so
overwhelming and they don't affect me as much. Now. Granted

(24:23):
I'm a little older, but I still think it's true.
You can see the passion. When Sam Raimi was starting
to make his movies, he had no dollies, he had
no special effects. He had people who wanted to work.
And it was the same with George, same with Wes.

Speaker 5 (24:46):
And you can tell you can see and yeah, and
I've made this argument a lot of times with things
like CGI, and I'm not completely against the idea.

Speaker 2 (25:02):
Obviously, I know there's a certain amount of things that
have to that has to cater for, but I don't know.
Sometimes I find with a movie that's just pure CGI,
I'm so taken out of the whole atmosphere in the
whole world that I'm like.

Speaker 4 (25:18):
It's just clearly obvious.

Speaker 2 (25:19):
It's like the cg has gotten so good, it's so unbelievable,
if that makes sense, Like, in no way can it does.

Speaker 3 (25:28):
The other thing that it does is that it puts
a barrier between you and the reality of the thing
because you know that it can't so that those things
can't exist. You can't destroy the entire city and have
people be smashed and crushed and killed and then come
back to life. After a while, it's gone, okay, come on,

(25:48):
we have come to rely on spectacles and we have
lost what makes these things really either frightening or engaging
or dramatic, which is the human element of it. When
we did Sales from the Crips or Tales from the
Dark Side, George's Creepshow, you have to look, there's a

(26:13):
story there. There's a story with characters that are identifiable,
that are relatable even if you hate, and that's what
engages you, not the special effects. The special effects should
be in support of those, not the other way around.
And I'm afraid that what's happened with a lot of

(26:34):
our reliance on spectacle these days is that we're in
love with spectacle and we've forgotten store.

Speaker 4 (26:44):
It's funny as well, and I think.

Speaker 2 (26:48):
There's slowly a shift maybe back towards that when you
see movies like Terrify or Tree, for example, which.

Speaker 3 (26:57):
I haven't seen, so I'm sorry I won't be able to.

Speaker 2 (27:00):
Yeah, it's not necessarily even about the story, just more
about the sense of I think they only used CG
just to take out wires and stuff, so all, yeah,
it's all practical effects in camera effects, and people seem
to really dig that kind of real gritty look, and
I'm like, that's I think it's it's made that switch
again where people are like, I just don't want to

(27:22):
see a CG thing. I seen a video earlier last
week about the most recent Ghostbusters movie, and I didn't
notice at the time, but I remember coming out going
it was fine, but it just felt really really fake,
not realizing that all the backgrounds they shot none of
that movie in New York City at all. It was

(27:43):
all blue screened. So even everything like they're walking down
the steps at one point of a building, it's all
blue screened.

Speaker 4 (27:50):
There was like four steps and that was it.

Speaker 2 (27:53):
And now again I'm like, that's probably why it didn't
feel as authentic as as the original.

Speaker 3 (28:00):
Yeah, you know, listen, there are plenty of I'm seeing
uses of volume stages these days that really blow my mind,
although it didn't do that well. For example, the Last
Voyage of the Demeter really had a wonderful look and
feel to it. First of all, it had really good acting,

(28:21):
and it had pretty good storytelling, and the monster when
it was there was pret frightening, but it was obviously
they for budgetary reasons and others. They had to create
a world that just doesn't exist or would be so
expensive you'd never be able to do it. That was
a good use of say volume stages and artificial settings.

(28:48):
But I hate to keep pounding on the Marvel movies
or the big superhero movies these days, but they basically
create worlds that are so fantastical and so as I say, spectacular,
that you're removed from it.

Speaker 2 (29:07):
I think, Yeah, and especially when it even when it
comes down to simple things like a bedroom has to
be completely CG, an office has to be completely.

Speaker 3 (29:18):
Yeah, and I don't see how it's that much cheaper
anyway to believe.

Speaker 2 (29:24):
Yeah, I'm often fascinated by that. Is that a Is
that a budgetary decision? Is that a time frame decision?
Is it? Is it quicker to do it like green Screen?

Speaker 3 (29:35):
No? No, no, no, it's not. And CG and volume
stages and those kinds of things can create worlds that
you just can't create in the in the real That's
what the benefit should be they're gonna do with Star
Wars or if you're gonna do Dune like I get,

(29:55):
you can create worlds and and make use of that
technolog clogy to really help build the world. But it's
not cheaper, and it's not faster, and it requires a
whole filmmaking mindset that puts the human element really in
the back, on the back burner, because and actors will

(30:18):
tell you they would much prefer to work in a
real environment and then come down three stairs, as you said,
Robert Greenstream, they don't have any world to react to,
so and that becomes obvious. I think I think some
filmmakers like it because they come out of a background

(30:43):
where they've they've studied that kind of technology and they're
maybe they're very into games, gaming, and so as filmmakers
they have a lot of fun creating these worlds technologically.

(31:04):
But I'm just a little school I try to be
around real people in a real environment and then throw
some shit at the fans.

Speaker 4 (31:12):
It's funny.

Speaker 2 (31:12):
I really do feel like there's been a shift again
though in the last year or two, maybe very slowly,
but I find some of the projects that are doing
well versus on paper, maybe what studios thought would do
well are like vastly different now, Like a lot of
those movies you're talking about, those Disney movies, those Marvel movies,

(31:33):
all that kind of stuff. Like I'll be honest, if
you look at it on paper, they just haven't performed
at all.

Speaker 4 (31:39):
They've just flapped one after another.

Speaker 2 (31:41):
And then you see these movies that are made for
not even a fraction of the budget, and they have
a lot of practical effects, and and like you said,
there's a we have real people reacting to real environments
and an actual story. And then these things like have
these crazy box office returns. I think maybe shows the
shift in what the audience wants.

Speaker 3 (32:03):
I hope you're right now. I've got a couple of
projects now that are they're not. We don't have the
Marvel budgets, so we're gonna have to be creative. But
to me, that's that's part of the fun.

Speaker 2 (32:18):
That's always definitely been part of your style, right to
be able to and work with what you've got. The
transition from Tales from the dark Side TV show and
then to the movie, which I just rewatched again a
couple of nights ago, how different like the wrap around
story feels like one kind of story, and then.

Speaker 4 (32:41):
Each of the stories that he.

Speaker 2 (32:43):
Tells they all feel like they fit in the same movie,
but they all feel vastly different at the same time.
It's a strange. I'm not sure how to explain what
I mean. They all have a different tone.

Speaker 3 (32:53):
I know exactly what you mean. But that was liberate parent.
That was definitely a style choice that I made right
from the beginning, and it's the reason I like anthologies.
Like I told you before, it was like making little
individual movies. So that when I approached each of those stories,

(33:13):
I said to the team, they're all going to be
completely different in not only the shooting style, that we employ.
But the look of each, the music score for each,
they're going to be completely different. They'll be tied together
by the wrap around story. I was fortunate to have

(33:34):
a brilliant cinematographer, Rob Draper, who share that vision, and
we could give, for example, the Mummy story a very
plastic nineteen forties adventure feel, and we could give lovers
Vow this very cool, blue romantic feel. We can give

(33:58):
Cat from Hell this almost on a ramatic black and
white terror noir. Field and I got the composers to
do the same thing, and so we didn't have a
lot of money to make that movie. So what we
we made up for it with was style and and

(34:21):
with filmmaking.

Speaker 2 (34:25):
That's something else that I think maybe a lot of
people don't know about you. Obviously you mentioned you're a musician,
and you've also done a lot of music for a
lot of these projects. Is that something that you know, say,
when you go into tale, some dark side movie, or
or or any project. Is that something that's in the
back of your head like that, that musical brain as well,

(34:47):
Because obviously I don't know if people have ever done this,
but if you if you watch something that has no
score or no kind of sound, it's a very different experience.

Speaker 4 (34:58):
I think you.

Speaker 2 (34:59):
Actually it was lost on me for a long time,
and the importance of that attention to detail and how
that can make you feel.

Speaker 3 (35:08):
The other funny thing to try to sometime is to
watch a movie and turn off the sound and put
on another score that you like, and see how that
makes you feel differently about the movie you're watching. Listen, Aaron,
I say this all the time, and I truly believe this,
that music is as much a narrative elopment as the

(35:30):
dialogue or the cinematography or the edit. It is right
up there as a narrative elopment that is part of
the storytelling of any film. And when you see it
reused greatly, then it really enhances your appreciation of the film,

(35:51):
especially in this genre. And it's not just all about shocks,
things and creepy pads, so it can be melodic. When
I did the score for Day of the Dad, I
remember that when the movie came out, people said, what
is this? What is this Caribbean music be in this

(36:12):
r movie? And the people hated it. Now it's become
more accepted and people like it, But it was a
choice that I made that George really liked and it
worked for that particular story. So, uh, when I'm doing
a project, I never think, oh, this is the music

(36:35):
I'm going to write for the project, because it's just
too much. I did do it in television, but for
a feature film. And besides which I'm cutting off my
I love the collaboration of filmmaking. I love working with
cinematographers and editors Stephen and these and composers. They all

(36:57):
bring and they all bring their creativity to the project.
And why would I not want that? Why enhancing what
I'm doing. They're making me look good.

Speaker 4 (37:13):
In in that? Is it difficult?

Speaker 3 (37:16):
Then?

Speaker 2 (37:18):
I know what you're saying about about enjoying the collaboration.
But let's say I've made a decision that I think
it should be this way, and then maybe you listen
or you go, really, I'm not feeling that. How do
you navigate those conversations to try?

Speaker 4 (37:34):
And someone told me.

Speaker 2 (37:35):
Before it's you've got to It was actually Eli Rot
I had done I had done work for his Crypt
TV company over a decade ago now, and he had
said to me, he was like, you have to learn
that skill of if I need something to be just
tweaked a little bit. I'm just not happy with it.
I need to make it that person's I need it

(37:56):
to be your idea.

Speaker 3 (37:58):
Yeah, well, that's actually really good advice. I don't know.
I've never had that problem because I go into it
with an open mind, first of all, and if I've
hired that person, I've hired them because I like what
they do, so I'm expecting that they're not going to
go off the rails. And but occasionally there is a

(38:19):
disagreement about what it should be. Ultimately, I'm the boss,
so it's a matter of how gently you can say,
this is really not what I had in mind. Let's
let's try something different and see or tweak it a
little bit here and there. That goes for any collaboration

(38:40):
that goes for working with a cinematographer. Fortunately, I have
enough vocabulary that I can talk to a musician about
what it is I'm hearing or what it is I want.
I never say, play this note or play that chord point,
so I never do that, but I can talk to

(39:01):
them in terms of what I think the music should
do emotionally, you.

Speaker 2 (39:07):
Like you've done I don't want to say obviously, you
get a lot of questions about your your hard work
sci fi, but a lot of this stuff has been
horror adjacent. Is that just a world that you enjoy
more than maybe some of the other genres or is

(39:28):
it a case of sometimes I hear they see your work,
your work does well, everybody talks about it, and then
you get the phone call of yeah, we've seen Tails
from the dark Side, We've seen whatever it might be
doing this that It's like, just just give me that again.
I just want that project in a different phone.

Speaker 3 (39:46):
I should be so lucky they keep me working. No.
I I'm happily entrenched in the genre I've made a
career of I love it. I think it's because I
don't look at it as I think great horror is

(40:08):
actually mostly metaphoricals. It's not only about the story on
the screen, but what what what's coming from the story,
or what's what's influenced the story. It may be about
a small town that in wherever, but it's probably about

(40:29):
every small town or a lot of bigger issues. Also,
I've never been even though I've worked some of the
greats like George and west I, my work has never
been characterized by a lot of gore. It's been more

(40:50):
psychological suspenced and thriller that attracts me. And so it's
interesting you should say horror adjacent because I it depends
on what you call horror. There are any of psychological
horror stories that I guess some people wouldn't say that's
not really harr that's more thriller, but it's just good storytelling.

(41:15):
That's what I look for.

Speaker 2 (41:20):
Yeah, it's I don't know why you popped into my head,
but things like and I suppose it would probably fit
more into like the thriller aspect, and and people will
probably want to kill me over saying stuff like that,
but things like donor unknown and stuff I felt like
when I was watching. I don't want to say you
can make an argument that it's outright horror, but it
was like, there's elements here that, like, while I'm watching

(41:43):
the story unfold, I don't know if it's like my
brain is filling in the gaps and being like, oh, yeah,
but what if, Oh, I don't know what could be
going on behind the scenes that I'm not seeing.

Speaker 3 (41:53):
I'm here. I think that's great. I think that's great.
And from the filmmaker's point of view. Frankly, the same
skill starts. Look, I don't do comedy. Nobody's really asked me, ever,
to spend a lot of time doing comedy. I don't
really know whether I have that in my jeelbox. I

(42:13):
suppose I try it. But the same skill sets that
i'd bring to say, doing Tales from the dark Side,
I can bring the don't or unknown, the same filmmaking
techniques about how to build suspense, about how to create
fer They're the same skills a different story. And that's

(42:36):
a story about heart transplants, and there's really no there's
nothing hordor necessarily about it except for the hubris of
the surgeon who has decided to kill people to get
the heart.

Speaker 2 (42:54):
Is it difficult to be a director but then also
to write a screenplay? And I guess the process of
that was that something this I don't know, you have
to like chip away out over time, or was it
something that you jumped into when a project came up.
I'm always intrigued as to how people.

Speaker 4 (43:16):
Refine that skill.

Speaker 3 (43:19):
I didn't start out to be a writer at all,
But because I didn't come out of a film school
and I didn't have a lot of connections in LA
When I moved out there, I knew that there wasn't
going to be there, weren't going to be a lot
of opportunities of people throwing things at me, Hey, why
don't you direct this? Writers coming to me with their

(43:41):
scripts and wanting me to direct them. I'd have to
generate my own projects. So I taught myself the skill
I taught myself, and I think I've gotten better at
it over time and have learned how to create on

(44:03):
paper something that somebody wants to see come alive. And
that's an important distution. When you're writing a screenplay, you're
not writing something that is going to exist as a
piece of written material. I love to read screenplays, and
I like, you got to remember that a screenplay is
simply the blueprint for the movie. You've got to create

(44:25):
on paper the excitement that people will expect out of
the out of the filmmaking. So I've learned how to
how to make the page active and exciting, and those
are skills that you learned by reading. Steve King has

(44:46):
a great point of view about just writing in general,
which is you can't be a good writer unless you're
a good reader. So I studied a lot of screenplays,
and I looked at the ones we're very successful as movies,
and so why why are they what are they doing

(45:08):
on the page? Not not necessarily just a structure, it's
a three act structure, or it's got on page twenty seven,
there's there's a plot turn, none of that stuff. It
was more like, what am I reading in the scene
that makes me see that scene? What is it that
how is he using or chi is using the words

(45:31):
to create digital Imagyly so I screenplays, if you ever
read them, they're like, they're just like book point. They
don't They're not great pros. You would never never want
to pick up a book and read this stuff. But
I'm hoping that what it's doing is creating an emotional response.

(45:51):
It's creating imagery in your mind. That's the point.

Speaker 2 (45:57):
And then I guess to further that you've got something.
You mentioned that you have several projects at the minute
that you're potentially excited about getting started.

Speaker 3 (46:07):
The idea of I don't know the skill of being
able to.

Speaker 2 (46:09):
Pitch something or to maybe not so much pitch, but
I don't even know if I want to call it
to sell it. But again, getting across to somebody like
the money guys that this is what we're picturing. Because
a lot of filmmakers have said to me, that's another
thing that people forget about. It's conveying your idea to

(46:30):
the guy that has no idea about what you're talking about.
Like you may have lived with this project for x
amount of time. You're going into a sitting across from
a guy on a desk. He has no idea, he's
just looking.

Speaker 4 (46:41):
At the bottom line. Sell me something.

Speaker 3 (46:45):
It's exactly right. And it is a skill that you've
been only learned by doing. Yeah, it's a I've it's
the bane of my existence to go into a room
with a studio executive or a network executive and have
to tell them the story and pitch the story. Because

(47:09):
you have to be a performer. You have to learn
the way of telling the story. It's almost like sitting
down at a campfire and trying to tell them this
is why it's going to be great, and I'm going
to tell you this story. I'm gonna freak you out,
or I'm gonna make you a signing, And you can
only learn by doing it. I just don't know any

(47:30):
other way to do it. There is no manual of
say this and say that. Then at this point, I've
had people, Aaron, I've had I've had a couple of
people fall asleep in my pitches. I will give I
will give everybody one piece of advice. Never pitch your
project after lunch. Only do it in the morning if

(47:55):
you can't. Yes, exactly, never after they've had mashed. But
meet low for lunch and they're nodding off in the
middle of your bitch. But it's a skill and you
have to just learn by doing it. And again you've
got to remember you're not there to pitch the whole story.
What you're there to do is sell the excitement of

(48:18):
the eye. Because the best thing that can come out
of a pitch, if that's how it starts, is Okay,
let me see the script. And I know guys that
are fabulous pitch and then the producer says, yeah, but
the script didn't have it wasn't And I know that

(48:40):
there are some great writers who can't I just don't
know how to do it. That they are great writers.
And if you get a chance to read the script,
so you've got to find that sweet spot where you
can do both because that's what it takes, and you're
you're going in and asking people for a lot of money.
It's not chunk change, even low budget, and so people

(49:01):
are actually going to be cautious and some of them
just aren't gonna get it. But you have to find
a way that.

Speaker 2 (49:09):
Cuts from Has that aspect of the business changed drastically
in your time working in it? Have you noticed any
notable changes? Like I've heard some horror stories about people
and about executives, or they meet certain people and they
just feel like from the outset, this young guy just

(49:30):
has no desire, doesn't care about the format, doesn't care
about the genre or whatever sandbox we're trying.

Speaker 4 (49:36):
To play in.

Speaker 2 (49:36):
He's just completely out whatever next, next, next.

Speaker 3 (49:39):
It's the idea of I talk with a lot of Irish.

Speaker 2 (49:41):
Filmmakers and stuff and they get a successful movie made
on this side of the world, and then all of
a sudden, I until a few years ago, I had
never heard of this, Like the water bottle tour, where
like you visit every studio and the rental is just
full of water bottles and you come back to Ireland
so excited, going, wow, everyone loved all my ideas. I'm

(50:05):
great I've I've really I've hit I've hit the jackpots,
and it's like that phone doesn't ring one time.

Speaker 3 (50:12):
They'll kill you with kindness, they'll kill you with encouragements.
It's it's true, the one of them. It's that's exactly
the way it is. And that's why I say it's
very hard to cut through. I don't know. I guess
it's always been that way. But what I had noticed
during my career is it's become rarer and rarer to

(50:35):
pitch to people who really have a love for cinema,
who really knows cinema. I I go into meetings out
and I don't even talk about old movies anymore because
alf the time they don't know what I'm talking about. Yeah,
I'll reference a movie and it's just eyes gladed over,

(50:56):
or they'll say oh yeah, yeah, you know, but they
don't know. They're just saying, you don't know the movie
they're referring to. So it does me no good go
in and refer to It's just gonna be like nit
in this movie. You remember that old nineteen forties movie
that valued May and how there was not a special
effect in it, but you were so creeped out by
the way he shot it and the shadows on the

(51:17):
wall and the atmosphere in the room, and they're going yeah, yeah, yeah,
and where's the CG and all that. Okay, I'm out.
So it does you no good to and I try
not to be impatient about it, but there's a certain
point at which you just have to be realistic and

(51:38):
not getting I'm not somehow I'm in a different place
than I was. I'm not. I don't even live in
La more so, I'm not doing the constant Hollywood shuffle
of trying to get meetings and pitch ideas or have
somebody pitch me an idea. I've pretty much I've pretty

(52:03):
much developed my own stuff, so I can get to
a point where I can hopefully find a producer who
knows my background and will listen to me. That's what
I'm looking for. I'm really not out doing the studio
shuffle and wars. It's very the business has taken a
really hard hit these past few years with COVID and

(52:24):
then the Stripes. It's very hard to get a project made.

Speaker 2 (52:28):
Is that just for fear, like money, ways that they
won't see you return on the project, or like.

Speaker 3 (52:36):
Of course yeah, I think that's a big thing. But
it's also the tastes of change. People's tastes have changed,
And you just pointed out we went through a whole
period of big, spectacular superhero movies. Now people don't look
at the Oscars. This year film making community gain osters
to all these movies that nobody's ever seen. Yeah, none

(52:58):
of them made any money, and the studios are looking
at and going Anaura, Okay, maybe light the movie, but
it made Fuck. I can't run a studio on that.
So I think everybody's scared. I don't think they know what.
At the same time, the uh, the media has changed.

(53:23):
There are so many competitive ways for people to get
storytelling mm hmm on YouTube, on TikTok, on on television, streaming,
on television, network, on television hmm, independent and then and

(53:44):
then theaters, and it cost a porch to release a
movie in theaters. It's very People just are taking big
step backs.

Speaker 2 (53:56):
That am the idea of being able to consume content
pretty much anywhere. We've all got a phone now within
arms reach, where we can pretty much access essentially nearly anything.
But I still can't help but feel like as much
as I hear all these executives or so called creatives

(54:16):
or whatever talk about soon enough it's going to be
like We're going to consume all of our content through
TikTok or something like that. I still don't see it
breaking through as much I look on TikTok, and for
want of a better term, it's just a lot of
like brain dead, like souldess information, and I don't know
if I can ever see that truly being like a

(54:38):
proper medium, like even things with YouTube. Yes, there's a
lot of stuff on YouTube. Some people find rips of
all documentaries and behind the scenes stuff, and I would
consume a lot of things that way, But I don't
know if I could ever see myself specifically thinking, oh, yeah,
I'm going to consume all my movies or whatever true
YouTube or things like that. As someone who works professionally

(55:03):
in the space, what's your thoughts on the idea of
yes Wild. There is so many different places as regards streamers, Shutter,
all these different apps and of Netflix everything. At the
same time, I can't help but feel there's probably a
handful of good projects that get picked up, but then
the problem is they get dumped on Netflix next week

(55:25):
with forty five other movies and projects, and then we
don't get a chance to see them.

Speaker 3 (55:31):
It's a problem, and I don't know what the answer
is to it. I've never been in that side of
the business, so I don't know what the mentality or
the thinking is. But I don't think that movies are
ever going to go the way of the Dodo. I
think people love the experience of going to the movie theaters.
I think what happens is if they get the same

(55:53):
menu of storytelling over and over again, then you're gonna
the way from it. And don't forget it costs so
much to release a movie, which then makes it so
much to go to a movie. Take your family to

(56:13):
a movie. These days, you've got to come up with
one hundred and fifty dollars by the time you buy
the tickets of the popcorn and everything else that goes
with it. So you've got to make a choice. And
that movie better be good. You better come out of
the theater say, man, that was worth it, or you're
not going to go back. And now we can have
one hundred inch TV springs, So okay, that looks like

(56:36):
an interesting movie. But I think I'll wait till I
can see it because I got surround sound, I got
a big spree. It'll be a pretty good experience. But
I don't think it's going to kill the movies. But
I think you have to find a way to make
people want to go to movies that aren't the same.

(57:01):
And I don't know what the answer is because, as
I say, it's very in this competitive world. It's very
hard to cut through the noise and get people to
want to go to a movie when you're trying to advertise,
because it costs a fortune to release a movie. Costs
as much to promote it as it does to make.

Speaker 4 (57:19):
It, which is something I think people don't release.

Speaker 3 (57:23):
Even don't realize. So if you've got a ten million
dollar movie, you're probably going to have to put close
to ten million into advertising you get people to come,
and that's a big investment. So you can see why
the powers that be try to bet on well Man
because look at all the special effects, and look at

(57:44):
the star that's in it, and look at the action
and so forth. But again that's not my area. I
don't have a background in marketing or however these they think.

Speaker 2 (57:56):
So do you think about that all in your creative process,
Like when you have multiple projects that you're thinking about
trying to pitch them or get them out there. As
you're creating those worlds, do you think about, you know,
this is something I I don't not specifically as in, oh,

(58:18):
this is a Netflix show or this is an Amazon
film writing, but is that something that's in the back
of your mind about Okay, what's the best way we
should go about maybe having this actually made and be seen?

Speaker 3 (58:33):
Not really, Maybe I'm just old fashioned, but I think
if it's a movie that I would like to see,
that I figure there's a lot of other people who
would like to see it. So I try to, at
least with my work, I'll try to do stuff that
I would like to see that interests me, because then
I'll put that passion into creating the project and hopefully

(58:55):
I'll be able to get somebody that is interested in
love that they'll help me why the audience for So,
I can't really sit down and say I'm gonna sit
down and write a superhero movie this week because I
know that that's what's selling. Yeah, I just don't have
it in me. And fortunately I'm in a genre or

(59:19):
I've been associated with a genre that seems to be
pretty upgrade. As long as you come up with good
our stories and suspense thrillers, there's always a market for that.

Speaker 2 (59:29):
Is that something that you've noticed, I suppose parsoning behind
the scenes that like how supportive the fans of the
genre are. We get quite die hard when it comes
to things we love. And we've talked about lots of
projects that you have made and been involved with over
thirty years ago now and people still talk about them

(59:49):
as if they were released last week. Is that something
that you see much of and your interactions on different
shows and maybe chatting with fans and things like that.
It's probably one of the more excited communities out there.

Speaker 3 (01:00:05):
I think it's amazing, and I'm obviously I'm thrilled and
thank you everybody out there because it I encountered people
that know so much more than I do. They'll come
up and they'll talk to me about the character development
in this movie. It's only five minutes ago. God, I

(01:00:26):
did see that movie, didn't. It's It's amazing the stuff
that they remind me about my own stuff that I've forgotten,
Like you, just like today, bringing up scary tackles and
things like that. I wouldn't have thought about that in
a million years if you hadn't talked, if you hadn't
brought it up. So the fan base is fantastic, and uh,

(01:00:51):
it's it's really great to go to some of these
things and you see a lot of the same people
over and over again, which is okay too, but it's
it's it's a great thing when you have that kind
of fan base that's so in love with the genre.

Speaker 4 (01:01:08):
I do have a few more questions before I let
you go today.

Speaker 2 (01:01:11):
Is there any is there any unmade projects that you
can think of that you would have loved to have
made now? Obviously I understand there's probably things and ideas
there that maybe have blossomed into stuff you might be
working on now. But is there anything that sticks out
in your mind that maybe you were supposed to work
on or potentially we're working on that just never never

(01:01:32):
came to fruition.

Speaker 3 (01:01:34):
Oh sure, George and I. He wrote it and I
was going to produce it with him. He had a
version of Dracula that was and we had actually sold
her to ABC, but they didn't make it. That would
have been that was. It was pretty good. I did

(01:01:59):
an ad adaptation of a very successful European graphic novel
called Stricts, and it was a we're going to be
a limited series, and even though the book came out
in Europe, I was going to set it in Southeast

(01:02:20):
Asia and it had an incredible monster and a whole
great theme of inner species a developments and and human evolution,
and uh, I just would love to do that. But

(01:02:41):
it's just we almost had it sold and one of
those stories just didn't quite get over the finished line.
So there are, yes, there are several of them like that,
and there are a few that I got made that
I wish more people had seen, that had been promoted better,
like Cloude Barker's Book of Blood. Yeah, it just it

(01:03:03):
came out at a time two thousand, right for the
financial crisis. Producers needed to get their money back quick.
They made some lousy deals in my estimation, and it
ended up more on television than anything else. But it
was I really loved that movie, and I loved my

(01:03:25):
ad A taken it and Clyde did it too, and
we had a great time making it, but it just
didn't find the audience. And so.

Speaker 2 (01:03:33):
It's funny because I'd done a piece recently on on midnight.

Speaker 3 (01:03:38):
Me Train and oh yeah, I was doing a lot
of research.

Speaker 2 (01:03:42):
Yeah, And I was doing a lot of research, and
I'm after I'm actually going to be chatting with Jeff
who had done the screenplay for that.

Speaker 4 (01:03:50):
Oh yeah as well.

Speaker 2 (01:03:52):
And it's funny just from looking back at some of
the archived footage of like Clove talking behind the scenes
and things like that, and he seems to be the
number one guy that was like, Oh, my work just
seems to every time we adapt something and we feel
really good about it and everybody involved as excited and
really passionate, and I feel like we just we always

(01:04:13):
get fucked on that last step. And that was another
movie that kind of ended up the same, and it
just I think the week of release, they were like, oh,
you know, we're not releasing We're not given a major
theatrical anymore.

Speaker 4 (01:04:23):
We're doing like a it'stunate.

Speaker 3 (01:04:26):
We're just gonna throw it out there. Yeah, it's unfortunate,
and it yeah, it's it's really unfortunate, and it's something
that's outside of our controls as filmmakers. So you put
your blood, sweat and tears in it and months of
work and then at phases. At least I got to
make it and it's still there and maybe like effects
one day. This is the thing.

Speaker 2 (01:04:47):
Yeah, that's the thing I like about the community. I
think in all these different companies that you know, like
AGFA and you have Synapse, You've You've all these different
companies one on one films in the UK, have an
Umbrella Entertainment in Australia, all these different companies that try
and bring these movies back to the forefront. And I
definitely feel like the the horror audience it finds its

(01:05:10):
people over time. Do you find that something that happens
often the idea that you mentioned selling a story or
a movie or a TV show to a company and
then they don't make it. Is that something the companies
do because maybe they see the potential in the idea

(01:05:30):
and it's like, oh, we can't let them walk out
the door with that idea, so let's just buy it,
put it on the shelf, and then if we make it,
we make it, and if we don't, we don't.

Speaker 3 (01:05:40):
I don't think that that happens that often, because that's
a if they paid you to do it, there's a
fair amount of money that they've invested. So just to
put the money into it and say we're gonna kill
I don't think it makes a lot of sense. I
think it's more that things change. But from the moment
they bought it the idea, oh, we're really cited about this,

(01:06:01):
to the moment the project gets abandoned, so many other
things come into play. Maybe the screenplay didn't live up
to expectations, or maybe the place they thought they were
going to sell it to have has changed their entire
mo in terms of what they're making or putting out,
or they can't people can't justify the amount of money

(01:06:26):
it would take to make the project. I think in
terms of stricks, that's one of the things that happened.
It was not going to be a cheap show. But
and I think people got a little frightened of it
that oh this is pretty big. This is maybe a
little too big for us.

Speaker 4 (01:06:42):
I don't know.

Speaker 3 (01:06:43):
I wasn't in the room when those decisions were made.
I just know that they drifted away. So but I
don't think people have bought stuff to take it out
of the market. I think that's that would be a
foolish business efficient anyway, A foolish spent expense of money
another thing that's I guess you could call it.

Speaker 4 (01:07:04):
In some ways.

Speaker 2 (01:07:05):
I feel like a lot of fans of horror would
also dig something like Doom, and you were involved in
that universe, I guess long before. A lot of mainstream
audiences now think of the two most recent movies and
they're these huge, like blockbuster fantastical like worlds. And I

(01:07:26):
don't know if you've seen if you look on YouTube,
there's some channels that do these fantastic like deep dives
into like the lore of Doom. Yes, maybe for maybe
for somebody who doesn't want to sit down and cycle
through the books and find out everything like that, you
can get it in. But I suppose a short form
where it explains all the different characters and backstories and

(01:07:47):
motivations as somebody who was involved in that so many
years ago, and for it to be so well received
then to now fast forward whatever twenty years and to
see him be brought onto the screen and it made
feel like such an event.

Speaker 3 (01:08:04):
What was that like? I thought it was gratifying. I
was involved with it only to the extent even though
I'm an executive producer of the latest ones. With Rubinstein,
we were If I can claim any any share of

(01:08:26):
Denise movies, it would simply be because I was not
involved at all. So I don't want to imply that
I had anything to do with it. We were involved
because the success of our mini series changed the attitude
about what Done could be. As much as I love
David Lynch as a filmmaker, his Doom was not successful.

(01:08:50):
And it not entirely through his fault if they changed
the movie and he wanted him to take his name
off and and they basically get not. There's a lot
of great stuff in that movie, but by me as
a lover of Dune, in the world of Dune and
the storytelling that Herbert created over seven books, it was

(01:09:14):
not the Done that I wanted to see. And I
think people thought this book is just unadaptable, it's too thick,
there's too much, we can't do it, it's never going
to be a movie. We changed that attitude by doing
the miniseries that we did. They were hugely successful internationally
in the States, and right after that the words started

(01:09:39):
coming around, maybe we could make we could do a
theatrical version, and Richard and I there were several attempts
that I am so glad never saw the lighted because
they didn't involve us, but because we were involved, we
had to sign off on them or look at them
or what. Let me just say, the world is a

(01:10:04):
better place that they were not brought into the light
of day. However, when they got when Legendary finally got
up with Richard Schelp got the rights and brought on
then Villain was Okay, this is first of all, I
love him as a filmmaker. I loved his other movies.
It was like, Okay, this might have a chance of
being really great, and he's done a fabulous job. So

(01:10:27):
I don't Hey, I got my shot. I did mine.
They were successful, and I'm glad that this been brought
to a wider audience because I love that story. I
love the whole world of Doune, and I'm one of
the few that has read all seven books and loved them.
People said, oh, I got the first book. Boy, he
really went out there the rest of him. I said, yeah, boy,

(01:10:49):
they were great. Speaking of it, do you get.

Speaker 2 (01:10:53):
A chance to consume many films or books or TV
shows things like that, or is that something that you
actively do. Sometimes I get differing answers from from creative
some people. I feel like, if I'm working on a project,
I try not to consume too much in case I'm
inadvertently pulling ideas or or or styles from something else and.

Speaker 4 (01:11:16):
Then other people are.

Speaker 3 (01:11:19):
Consume. Yeah, that's me, I do too, But I don't.
I don't rush out and see every movie that's made.
I don't rush out and see every horror movie that
comes down of the pike. I just don't have that
much band.

Speaker 1 (01:11:32):
No.

Speaker 3 (01:11:33):
I I love it. I love and so fortunately for me,
I've actually been able to because it's so hard to
get any television or movie project or, I've I've found
a sort of a new career writing novels, and so
I've written several play that have just been published, once

(01:11:54):
called Residue and and one is called Passing. In fact,
I know.

Speaker 2 (01:12:07):
It's also something that I'm fascinated by because I was
segueing into the idea of you mentioned you never got
into film to be a writer, and then you went
on to write screenplays, and the inn that transition, I'm
right and saying this kind of all started like at
the start of the pandemic. How does one go from

(01:12:27):
as somebody who has spent years and years and years
trying to in my own small, little, tiny way. I
guess craft stories on a page that I feel like, yeah,
this is something that I would be happy with somebody
else reading and maybe enjoying. How does one just decide,
you know what, I've got lots of time now it's

(01:12:49):
the pandemic, I'm going to write a novel.

Speaker 3 (01:12:53):
I didn't decide it like that, but I had more
time because I wasn't actively engaged in a particular project.
And although one of these has turned out, I did
do the prequel to it as a film in the
UK as a three episode in any series for Netflix.
But that's a whole long story in and of itself.

(01:13:13):
But to me, it goes back to just the way
I've looked at all of this stuff, which is it's
all storytelling the media. The medium might be different. It
might be a film, be a television show, it might
be a book, but it's all storytelling to me. So

(01:13:39):
I've practiced the craft in order to make it accessible,
but I've never looked at it as being so distinct
and separate that it's like, why are you stepping outside
of your lane? Well not, I'm still on a storyteller.
So I'm telling you the story, but I've chosen to

(01:13:59):
write it as pros as a novel, as opposed to
writing a screenplay and then trying to make the soulm
of it or the television show.

Speaker 2 (01:14:08):
Was that where these ideas something that you already had
maybe in your mind and had you floated around the
idea of writing novels before, but just time constraints didn't
allow it. And then obviously the pandemic kind of freed
up a lot of people's time.

Speaker 3 (01:14:25):
Yeah, I think that that's true. The idea percolates and
then it's what am I going to do with it?
Should it be? Is it a film that I'd like
to make? Or for example, this book that just came
out Residue it started it was going to always be
this book. With some producers in England that I have

(01:14:50):
worked with them the past. Fact, I did Clyde Barker's
Book of Blood with them. They I had told them
the idea and they said, this is really great, but
the book isn't going to be ready for us. Is
there any way that you can create the prequel to
the story of this book? And I won't bory with

(01:15:10):
the whole lot, and I said, yeah, And so I
created this sort of the backstory for what this book
is about as a three episode mini theories, which we
then produced in the UK. So it's funny how that
all came about because it was just an idea I had,

(01:15:33):
but I thought this could really be expanded into a book,
and yet I made a television show out of it first.

Speaker 2 (01:15:39):
That's and I think that says a lot about about
your work and your ability to maybe craft the story.
I don't know if that's a lot of people maybe
just listen to the show just for pure entertainment, and
it's very surface level, which is completely fine, but I
don't know for anybody else who's a bit more of
a sinified or interest in stuff like that, it might
be last. And I guess the difficulty of being able

(01:16:01):
to sell your idea so well to get someone excited
about it that they asked you to create a prequel
show before the book is even ready, I think that's
quite that's quite an achievement.

Speaker 3 (01:16:14):
I was stunned, to be honest with you, in terms
of how they came about doing it, but I think
it was just the right place at the right time too.
They had a need for something that they wanted to do.
They also had a young director because doing it in
the UK, even though I had done Book a Blood
for them, this time they had a whole financing scheme

(01:16:36):
that required them to have a British director And they
had a young fellow that I met and liked very much,
and so I collaborated with him on the creation of that.

Speaker 1 (01:16:49):
And it.

Speaker 3 (01:16:51):
Started off that they were going to do it as
a What they really initially asked me to do was
this was back in the day when what was it
quitti and things like that were coming out where they
were trying to do like bite spies, like TikTok media. Yeah,
and so the whole idea was maybe we could do

(01:17:13):
this story as twenty five five minute episodes, and so
I started developing it that way, and then they finally
said that we're that's we don't want to do that,
but we do want to do it as a television thing,
and then put it all together as a feature and
it aired in the or went out in the UK

(01:17:35):
as a theatrical for a brief period of time before
they sold it to Netflix.

Speaker 2 (01:17:40):
Is there a potential we see either the book get
adapted or something else in that universe on screen.

Speaker 3 (01:17:49):
I would love it, or talked to my agent about
maybe trying to find somebody to do this as Yes,
it would follow on perfectly the story. If you know
the story, or when you when you do find out
about the story, you'll see how perfectly it could work.
So I would love it if that would be the

(01:18:10):
next incarnation. Also, this is part of a trilogy, so
there's I'm working on the second book already.

Speaker 2 (01:18:17):
Is that something that you think about while you're creating
the story or does that tell you into what you
said not not that long ago about it's it's just
the medium, and if the story is there and the
story is right, it can be adjusted based on whatever
medium is chosen.

Speaker 4 (01:18:35):
I didn't know.

Speaker 3 (01:18:36):
I didn't start out saying I'm going to write a
three book trilogy. I just I wrote the first one
and I thought about it, and I thought, this story
really doesn't end. There's still places I could go with it.
And that's what's the other one. Excuse me for this
shame or stealth motion theres I love it. This is
the book that came out last year, Passing Through Bells,

(01:18:57):
which is a psychle logical thriller with a bit of
a supernatural edge, and it's a one off it. I
don't see this. This is this. I'm hoping my agent
can maybe set up as a limited series, and but
I don't see it really. I suppose if somebody came

(01:19:19):
and said, can you really come I do a speakuel,
or let's see what happens next, I suppose I could
think about it, but I haven't really thought that at all.

Speaker 2 (01:19:28):
How does one like what does your and obviously what
they're getting into like minute shove every little thing, But
how does somebody have the time to create all these
stories and these different works? And then you mentioned there's
there's things that you can't talk about that you're working
on and potentially trying to pitch and get made and
different things. There's there's a lot of young people out there,

(01:19:52):
I think, who feel like I just I just don't
have time, and I just I'm so tired and this
and that. And I think you've had this this long
career and that fire hasn't seemed to have quelled at all.
And I'm just fascinated as to are you a very
regimented and structured kind of person. Is it a case
of when you feel like maybe there's something common to you,

(01:20:14):
it's time to grab the laptop or grab a no
pad and just start to to write things down.

Speaker 3 (01:20:20):
Earlier in my career, fear was a great motivator. Yeah,
and I had to make a living. Yeah, and then
I had a family. But I can't help that's just
the way I am. The stories. I'm always thinking about
that stuff. It's just so. Or if you could see
my desk, there are posted notes everywhere about things, the

(01:20:46):
cluttered mess, but uh so, And a lot of times
things will just percolate for a while. And if they
continue to percolate and I continue to think about them,
I can't stop about them. Then it's time to sit
down and actually try to get some coherence to it.
But you're right, I am. I'm pretty disciplined, pretty structured.

(01:21:09):
I'm good in the morning to write. I'm good in
the afternoon to rewrite. If that's the case. If I'm
on if I'm on the floor, then it's then you
know what it's like, just all consuming. If i'm directing something,
I can't do anything else. But if I'm in this mode,
we're in between projects or whatever, then I try to

(01:21:33):
have something going all the time. I'm not very good
at I get bored easily, so I'm not very good
at standing around staring off into space. I have to
be I do that a lot. I have to get
it down.

Speaker 2 (01:21:51):
Because that was going to be my follow up question
was do you find it difficult, even after all this
time to switch off that creative brain? Like I I
definitely with this at a way way smaller, lesser, not
even comparable.

Speaker 3 (01:22:04):
But the idea that's not true.

Speaker 2 (01:22:06):
There's times there's times I'm places and maybe I'm not
as present because I'm like, oh, yeah, the thing and
then wouldn't that be cool.

Speaker 4 (01:22:13):
If this and if that? Do you have difficulty?

Speaker 3 (01:22:17):
Yeah?

Speaker 4 (01:22:17):
Is that a difficulty to switch off?

Speaker 3 (01:22:19):
Yeah? All the time. It's impossible. And I saw I
don't even try. Yeah, even if I'm watching something else,
it's giving me Ooh, that gave me an idea about
the thing. I'm gonna pay attention to the movie that
guy and it may have nothing to do with the
thing I'm watching. Maybe it just you know, the mind

(01:22:42):
is a crazy thing. Things get stuck there and then
that just needs a little trigger And why not have
anything to do with the thing your words that trigger
came from somewhere or the muse.

Speaker 2 (01:22:52):
Do you have any do you have any comfort movies,
whether that's horder otherwise, like movies that you would you
would say you viewed multiple times.

Speaker 3 (01:23:02):
Oh God, yes, Haunting is one of them. Forbidden Planet
is another. But Lawrence of Arabia, and you're kidding me.
At least once a year I have to sit through
the whole thing, The Godfather, The Godfather movies, many of

(01:23:24):
Sports's movies. Yeah, there's lots of them that I just
watch them. And then one of the great joys of
both my wife and myself here in our States is
a channel called TCM Burner Classic Movies. And there was
a period of time last year when the powers that
be we're thinking about shutting it down, and people went nuts.

(01:23:48):
You can't do that because it is really one of
the few places unless you're a real cinephile and will
go around and haunt all kinds of stores and so
for to find these things if they exist, and some
of them don't. These people find them. I don't know
how they do it. They've got access to the film libraries.

(01:24:09):
But the people at TCM are just absolute treasures. The
movies they come up with. Eddie Muller has a series
called Noir Alley nothing but Film Noir, and he's written
books about it, and it's just I mean, it's badloss

(01:24:32):
but all then they'll do a whole day of a
particular actor, or they'll do a whole day of a
kind of a movie musical so, or they'll do a
whole day of just nineteen thirties movies, or they'll do
a whole night of pilot movies. They found all these
and it's just so that's comfort food.

Speaker 4 (01:24:51):
Yeah, and I feel like that definitely.

Speaker 2 (01:24:52):
It still has such a huge place, like what you
just mentioned there about they were talking about maybe potentially
shutting it down and then people went crazy, and it
ties into I suppose something I was going to ask
about physical formats, physical media, both with your own movies
and then in general and then and in the format
of I'm I'm an avid reader, but I I love

(01:25:13):
to have the physical book. Yeah, like I will read,
I will read on Kindle, sure, but there's something for me.
There's a connection there for me with that, and similar
with movies that I love, there's a connection there with
having that physical like the the definitive collector's edition or
whatever it might be. And it might have the little

(01:25:35):
fifty page booklet that has maybe an updated interview with yourself,
maybe with some behind the scenes things.

Speaker 3 (01:25:42):
And the extras.

Speaker 2 (01:25:44):
Yeah, yeah, and I just love to have that what's
your stance on? And I suppose the physical media and
even tying into things like Turner Classic and stuff like that.

Speaker 3 (01:25:54):
I've got. I've got one hundred, I've got hundreds of DVD's.
I've even got the hs's but I still have and
I find I had to find an old VHS machine
because mine broke and they don't make them anymore. So yeah,
I have that. And I've got Eddie Muller's from the
TCM about noirs. And then in fact, then one of
the purchases that I need to make this week, it's

(01:26:16):
got a new book out called Dark City Dames. I
think it's what it's called. It's all about the women
of film noirs. Yeah. I love to have that physical
stuff in my hands. I'm not a big reader online
of books and stuff. I don't. I have a lot
of friends who love books on tape because it's easier

(01:26:37):
for them when they're exercising or driving to listen to
the book. I don't like them. I got to have
the book and read it, and I.

Speaker 4 (01:26:47):
Think as well.

Speaker 2 (01:26:48):
Obviously it's not a physical thing that people can can
have or collect or anything like that. But what we've
just done right now for the last hour and twenty
minutes is into the popularity of this feeds into that,
I think, because people want to hear from the person
behind the project, how it's made, how do they think,

(01:27:09):
what's their life like, what's something that they went through
that maybe I went through, Or there's something I didn't
know about that movie that I thought I did, and
all those little things. I think it's becoming more and more.
I don't know if it's a connection between the audience
and then the person behind the camera or behind the story,
but I've noticed a massive optic in people wanting to

(01:27:31):
know and not the generic questions, not just so, how
was it to make Tails from the Dark Side?

Speaker 3 (01:27:38):
What is a funny story? If you can tell me
about the cast, or something like that. But yeah, I
know what you mean. There's definitely a connection. Or I
think I think it's because these things mean something to us.
If you really like a movie, or if you really
like a book, there's the cultural influence of it and
the personal influence. And if you've become attached to a story,

(01:28:05):
it seems only natural that you'd want to know how
did this come how did the story come into being? Why?
Maybe there's an insight from the creator that tells me
why it means so much to me. I'm the same way, man.
I The first thing I do when I get a
movie or DVD is I look at the extras. Right now,

(01:28:26):
I look at the movie.

Speaker 4 (01:28:28):
Yeah, I'm so bad for that. I just I don't know.

Speaker 2 (01:28:31):
I don't know what it is, but there's just something
there for me that I love here. And I will
watch a movie sometimes three four times. If there's multiple
audio commentaries before I even watch the actual movie, I've
watched it. I'll be on like my fifth time, and
then I'm watching a property.

Speaker 3 (01:28:48):
Yeah right, Yeah, the commentary is also great. Yeah, and
that for me, Aaron, that goes for even even music stuff.
I love the documentaries about what it was like in
the studio when they were making that wreck. I love
the American Masters is the name of the show where

(01:29:08):
they have individuals doing background on what was going on
around Beethoven's life when he wrote this symphony or Aaron
Copeland Symphony, or the other day, we were launching a
show with this fabulous guy named Scott Yu who was
talking about a fifteenth century composer who came to Spain

(01:29:30):
and actually invented the formal classical music of the guitar,
because when he came from Italy to Spain, he was
inundated with all this folk music and the guitar and
all the Spanish people that had created all this wonderful music.
Oh my god, I've got to I've got to formalize

(01:29:51):
this in ways he and he did, and this show
just went into all of that and all these fabulous
Spanish musicians ll make of musicians that were and just
it's like that's kind of behind the scenes. Stop was
just like I was riveted.

Speaker 2 (01:30:09):
And it's funny the amount of times that I if
I was on the other side of this and I
was listening to this conversation, I may hear you talk
about something like that, and then instantly I go down
a rabbit hole and now all of a sudden, Now,
all of a sudden, I'm enjoying that thing which I
didn't know about before.

Speaker 3 (01:30:28):
Absolutely, that's the beauty of your show man. Yeah, that's
what I love about conversations like this.

Speaker 2 (01:30:35):
Where is the best place for people to support you,
to keep up today what you're doing, or where would
you like to direct people to.

Speaker 3 (01:30:44):
I have some people that helped me with it, because
I'm an old guy, not all guy.

Speaker 4 (01:30:49):
I'm not.

Speaker 3 (01:30:51):
A social media may then I'm on Instagram, I'm on Facebook,
and my official website is all one word official John
Harrison dot com. So people go there, they can see

(01:31:12):
everything about me and and I try to stay somewhat
turn I post. I don't I'm not a lot. I'm
not Here's what I had for breakfast or I'm going
down to the store tonight. But I will put stuff
out and.

Speaker 2 (01:31:28):
So yeah, for everybody listening or watching, all the links
will be down below in the description anyway, so we'll
make that really easy for you. All the links to
buy John's books, check up on his work as social
media's and stuff like that will be down below in
the description. I have two final things I want to
ask you before I let you go, two super quick questions.
One was I think the collectors here and the fans

(01:31:49):
of horror would kill me if I didn't ask this
question is have you kept anything from any of your projects,
any pro anything like that, and hing that sticks out
as like I have that thing. I'll tell you one
because people always want me to sell it and I won't.
I did Creep Show with George Romero, and if you

(01:32:13):
remember that movie, there's a famous episode called the Crate
and it's about the monster that comes out of the
crate and each it great, great episode. I love the
music that I wrote for At the end of it,
we had to do a shot where Hal Holbrook takes

(01:32:33):
the crate.

Speaker 3 (01:32:34):
He's trapped the monster in it, and he's gonna dump
it in the quarry and hopefully the thing will drown.
So he has the big quarry and we weighed it
down and we have the shot of him up on
the edge of the of the quarry and he pushes
it off and it's supposed to go down and go
into the water. The only way we could get the

(01:32:54):
shot of it hitting the water and thinking was to
create a miniature crate that was about a quarter of
the size looked exactly like it right down to the detail.
But the production designer was so cool and we had
the camera set up so that we can drop it
into a tank and it would think all that stuff.
And I asked the producers at the end if there

(01:33:17):
was one thing I can have, Can I have that?
And I made I asked just at the right time
because there were two or three other people behind me,
including and they can remain nameless, but they were high
up in the food jade and they wanted it to
But I got it, and it's upstairs and it will

(01:33:38):
never leave me. So I've got that. There are a
few other things I've got, Oh I'd have to go
looking for them, but there, yeah, just a few things here.
It more that's the most notable.

Speaker 2 (01:33:52):
I would say there's collectors that are screaming right now
that would love to take any of that stuff off
your hand.

Speaker 3 (01:33:57):
It is the original, I guarantee you. I've seen other
I've seen knockoffs out there are both a big one
and the little one. But I can tell you I've
got the one that was on theft.

Speaker 4 (01:34:09):
It's funny. It's funny.

Speaker 2 (01:34:10):
You mentioned that I've had several conversations with uh with
Bill and Malone, and he spoke about oh yeah, he
obviously he was a big collector of film props and
different things like that, and he just mentioned that years ago,
he was like, it was a completely different Timarin. It
wasn't like it is now where people are offering crazy money.
We used to literally dig in the dumpsters outside the

(01:34:31):
studios and the amount of times that he showed up
to two sound stages and they were literally like, oh, yeah,
this is all trash.

Speaker 4 (01:34:38):
We're just like this garbage. So you can do whatever
you want with it.

Speaker 3 (01:34:41):
You can take you can take the garbage if you like.
It's funny. It has it has changed quite a lot.
But I'm looking at your background there with all of your.

Speaker 6 (01:34:50):
Masks and stuff, which is just fabulous, really loving it's
I do have some some actual original pieces, but it's
crazy the amount of money that now. I'll come in
totally and I have to be My friends Tom Savini
and Bringing the Catuo are huge collectors, and you go

(01:35:10):
into their houses on this like going into a forest
Ackerman bar music. Yeah, their whole hasard. Their their wives
must be saying can you stop.

Speaker 4 (01:35:22):
Yeah, there's a there's a very I'm not that bad
for anybody listening.

Speaker 2 (01:35:26):
There is actually a really cool YouTube video of Tom's collection,
which is quite which is quite vast to say.

Speaker 3 (01:35:33):
The least yea.

Speaker 2 (01:35:34):
And the final question before you let you go is
I was going to ask I always asked why horror.
I don't know if that's too pigeonhole of a question,
but maybe why why filming? Why filmmaking or why storytelling?

Speaker 4 (01:35:48):
What what is it about that that makes you.

Speaker 2 (01:35:53):
Draws you back constantly and what does it mean to you?

Speaker 3 (01:35:58):
I don't know that there's an easy answer to that.
Like I said earlier, it's just that's who I am.
I can't stop it. I think from an early age
that's the way I was. I loved drama, I loved theater,
and it was just what I was drawn to. I guess,
in a way you can, you can say that it

(01:36:24):
was the way that I figured out the world. And
I've always been Nobody's ever accused me of being subtle.
So I'm drawn to storytelling large, which is why I
probably like lar and suspense and thrillers and so forth,

(01:36:47):
so megadramatic stuff. But I think if it's that sounds
a little bit pretentious. But I do think it's true
that I've learned a lot about the world through storyteller,
about doing it and consuming it.

Speaker 4 (01:37:09):
It's funny.

Speaker 3 (01:37:11):
I've always been it's.

Speaker 2 (01:37:13):
A funny dynamic to be sitting here chatting to you,
and it's like you feel the same way about creating
the stories, about figuring out the world as I felt
when I was escaping into those same stories you created
and then figuring out things.

Speaker 4 (01:37:28):
And I don't Yeah, that's what happened to you, I know, right,
But it's a funny dynamic.

Speaker 2 (01:37:35):
Out from both sides of the perspective, people can get things,
and I definitely think so many times people reach out
and say, oh, could you ask this question about this movie?
Or this movie helped me through a really bad period
of my life, or this is the movie I go
to when things are not so great and I can
just escape back into that story and forget about everything

(01:37:56):
else that's going on.

Speaker 3 (01:37:57):
Yeah. Absolutely absolutely. It's why has survived all this time.
Why I don't think it'll ever stop. I don't think
no matter what we do technologically and how we consume stores,
maybe it will be great when we have these goggles
and we can actually live in the environment and Apple

(01:38:18):
vision pro and all that stuff. But there is something
about a shared experience of sitting in a movie theater
or like a collective dream and being able to share
those stories, even if it's just a home with your
family watching these things, It'll never go away. You've been
doing it. Those human beings were upright.

Speaker 2 (01:38:36):
Yeah, calling stores, John, this has been a fantastic conversation,
and I open a conversation actually, and I could talk
to you for multiple hours, but I won't take up
any more of your time. I probably enjoyed it in
the time. It's been fantastic. I would love to stay
in touch. I wish you all the best. I kind
of wait to see, maybe or hear about some of

(01:38:57):
these projects that you have through At the minute.

Speaker 3 (01:39:02):
You and I will communicate and hopefully when.

Speaker 2 (01:39:05):
Some stuff gets announced we we can revisit again and
maybe have a chat.

Speaker 3 (01:39:10):
I've enjoyed it immenseally. Thank you for it's been fantastic
our hope. I didn't ramble on too much.

Speaker 4 (01:39:17):
Certainly didn't.

Speaker 2 (01:39:18):
And like I said, for everybody, whether you're listening or
watching on Spotify, Apple Podcasts or any podcast platform, or
on YouTube Rumble or any of those, all the descriptions
to John stuff will be down below on the description,
so make sure to check that out and support his
work like I said, John, it's been a pleasure.

Speaker 3 (01:39:33):
I hope you have a great rest of your day
and we'll see you real soon.

Speaker 1 (01:39:38):
Thank you, Thanks, thanks for listening to another episode of
Class Hardcast. Stop the CHC podcast at classarcast dot com
at first Class, hire on Instagram to talk and YouTube,
or on Twitter and Class Underscore Horror. The CHC podcast

(01:40:02):
is hosted and produced by Aaron Doyle and is an
fcch production.

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