...About Mike Flanagan

Mike Flanagan is at the top of his game when it comes to storytelling and horror. In this episode, I talk about what he's done and what I'd like to see him do next.

Episode Transcript

(00:01):
I'm Stephen Monteeth, and I'm hereto talk about Mike Flanagan. Mike Flanagan
is a really big name in horrorthese days. In the last decade or
so, he's put together a lotof really great horror projects. He did.

(00:24):
He did a movie called Oculus intwenty thirteen, which had Karen Gillen
in it, Karen Gillen from DoctorWho and the Guardians of the Galaxy.
He did a movie in twenty sixteencalled Hush. He did another movie called
Wija, Origin of Evil, anda movie called Gerald's Game. He was

(00:51):
really busy in twenty sixteen. Now, in twenty eighteen he did the Haunting
of Hill House series for Netflix,and then in twenty twenty he had The
Haunting of Black Manner, which waslike the second season, but it focused

(01:12):
on a different haunting obviously. Andin between those two he directed Doctor Sleep,
which is based on the Stephen Kingnovel. Then he did a couple
other mini series for Netflix, MidnightMass and then The Midnight Club, and

(01:34):
then just this last year he dida mini series called The Fall of the
House of Usher. Now this isostensibly part of his haunting series, The
Haunting of Hill House, The Hauntingof Black Manor, and now the Fall
of the House of Usher. Butthe Fall of the House of Usher is

(01:57):
a little bit different than the two. First of all, I'll tell you
a little bit about the first two. The Haunting of Hill House is based
on Shirley Jackson's story, but it'sit's very much it very much expands on

(02:19):
the original story. If you wantto, you can check out you can
read the original story, or youcan watch a movie called The Haunting that
came out in nineteen sixty three.It was a very great movie, very
well done. You can if youwatch that and then you watch The Haunting

(02:40):
of Hill House, you can seeall the elements from the original story that
were that were used in the Hauntingof Hill House, but there are also
a lot of a lot of newcharacters that are added in. He's very
good Mike Flannagan is writing characters.He's very good at writing families, especially.

(03:06):
He loves to have stories about familiesand the way they they interact with
each other and the way they respondto each other and sometimes growing apart and
then growing back together is a majortheme in his stories. And The Haunting

(03:28):
of Hill House is a great exampleof that. The next installment, The
Haunting of Blind Manner, is actuallybased on Henry James's story, The Turning
of the Screw, but it's notjust that one story of his. This

(03:50):
time, he doesn't he doesn't justtake the one story and adapt it like
he did with the Haunting of HillHouse. He takes some other Henry James
short stories and some other characters fromhis from his other stories, and he

(04:11):
sort of he sort of weaves themtogether into into a new type of story.
And just like and just like thefirst season, it all takes place
in one in one location, inone house, Blind Manner, And just
like with the Haunting Neville House,there are there are movie adaptations of The

(04:34):
Turning of the Screw. If youwant to watch any of them and then
go back and watch Haunting a BlindManner, you'll be able to see all
of those. But you'll also seethat he is again telling a unique story
with this new with this new adaptationand all these new elements that he's adding

(04:58):
into it, He's not just tellingthe original story over again. He's finding
a new way to tell this toaudiences. And in that sense, the
Fall of the House of Usher reallydoes fit with these first two seasons.

(05:24):
It doesn't have I mean, itdoes have a house. It has a
specific house where the where two ofthe main characters at least grew up,
and where the framing device for theseries takes place. It has the character

(05:47):
Roderick Usher, who grew up inthe house with his sister Madeline. He
goes back to the house when he'san old man and and believes he's dying
to to sort of tell the restof the story. So the framing device

(06:08):
of the of the Fall of theHouse of Usher does take place in a
house that arguably is haunted, butmost of the action takes place somewhere else.
So very so that's very different thanthan the first two seasons of the

(06:34):
Haunting Now, but it does havesimilarities. Like I said, with the
Haunting of Blind Manner, he useda lot of different elements from a lot
of different Henry James stories, andin the Fall of the House of Usher,

(06:55):
he uses a lot of elements fromEdgar Allan Poe. If you're a
fan of Poe, then you recognizethe title from from a from a Pose
story, and there are other andthere are plenty of other stories and poems

(07:15):
and characters that are drawn from frombasically Poe's entire body of work and woven
together into this new story that MikeFlanagan is telling with these characters. And

(07:38):
in that sense, it is verymuch like the first two series, the
first two seasons in the series.Now, I don't wanna, I don't
want to get too much into theplot or even the different subplots. But

(07:59):
if you're a Poe, if youknow about Edgarullan Poe, and if you've
read his work, then you're goingto have a lot of a lot of
endings for these characters are going tobe somewhat spoiled for you. I'll tell

(08:22):
you right now. And this isnot a spoiler for me to say this.
This is all stuff that you learnin the first few minutes of the
first episode. Roderick Usher has alot of different kids from a lot of
different women, and they all die. You know, the first time we

(08:46):
see him, he's at the funeralfor his the last of his kids who
have died, and then he's backat the house where he grew up in
telling us, you know, thisis how we got here, basically,
this is why they died, Thisis how they died. And if you

(09:07):
know, like I said, thestories that Poe has written, then you'll
already be able to guess how eachof his kids die, because each of
his kids dies in the same waythat a character from one of ed Growllan
Poe's stories dies. Yeah, theytheir stories are all updated for the modern

(09:33):
day, and they're all they're allabout as gruesome as you would expect,
and perhaps even more so. Thisis not a series for the faint of
heart. This is Mike Flanagan beingat his horror best. Now. You

(09:58):
can watch the Haunting of Hill House, and you can watch the Haunting of
Blind Manner, and there are somejump scares, and there are some really
intense moments, and there are somereally uncomfortable moments, and there are even
a sprinkling of gruesome moments in hereand there, and in Midnight Mass and

(10:20):
Midnight Club as well. But theFall of the House of Usher is where
he really leans into horror. Imean, just just the methods by which
Roderick's adult children all die is verygruesome. I won't even repeat them to

(10:48):
you here, because, like Isay, if you have read Edgar Allan
Poe, you'll be able to figureit out for yourself when you watch,
and if you don't, then well, I don't want to put you off
watching it because as you should notethat there is a lot of violence and
a lot of gore and a lotof disturbing scenes. But you should also
know that it's very well done.It's very well written, and the fall

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of the House of Usher is probablymy favorite part of the Haunting series so
far. It's probably my favorite thingthat Mike Flanagan has ever done. I
mean, like I said, I'vewatched a lot of his other things,
most of his movies I've watched,and and this is my favorite. Now,

(11:43):
first of all, we've got we'vegot a packed all star cast.
One of the things Mike Flanagan doesis he likes to work with the same
actors over and over again. Helikes to he likes to bring them back
for because he recognizes their talent andyou know, they obviously work together and

(12:07):
get along well together, and youknow, there's nothing wrong with that.
Tim Burton does it, Christopher Nolandoes it, Zack Snyder does it.
Lots of directors like working with thesame basic cast and crew over and over,
and Mike Flanagan does it. Too. He's got Bruce Greenwood as Roderick

(12:28):
Usher. He he worked with himin on Gerald's Game. He's got He's
got Henry Thomas, who has whohas played in the first two seasons of
The Haunting and and smaller parts inother movies. He brings in various other

(12:56):
actors from from Midnight Mass and TheMidnight Club. And he brings in,
of course, his wife Kate Siegel, who was in Hush as well as
you know a bunch of other moviesand series. And he even has Carlo

(13:20):
Gugino, who has been in somany of his projects. And she's fantastic.
I mean, she plays a characterwho who is in a word,
haunting just by herself. I don'tthink she's a ghost. It's never quite

(13:46):
confirmed what her character is, butHaunting does pretty much describe her now.
He also brings in for this series, he brings in some new people.
First of all, Madeline, Roderick'ssister is is played by Mary McDonald,

(14:13):
who I have loved ever since Isaw her in Sneakers and in Independence Day
and in Battlestar Galactica. She's fantastic. I had a very brief moment where
I got to meet her at DragonCon and tell her how much I appreciate

(14:33):
all the work that she's done overthe years, and she's still doing great
work. She's fantastic in this miniseries. And he also brings in a
character from one of Poe's stories,a character named Arthur Gordon Pim, who

(14:58):
is he's basically the the go toman for anything that the Ushers need.
He's not part of the family,but he's basically the fam at the family's
beck and call for anything. He'sa lawyer, he's a fixer, he's
an assassin. You know, he'swhatever they need him to be, and

(15:22):
he's His backstory is mentioned in theseries, but it's never shown. It's
from Poe's novel The Narrative of ArthurGordon Pym of Nantucket, and it even
has some Lovecraftian elements to it.He apparently saw Carla Gugino's character once when

(15:52):
he was a young man, andhe and he encounters her again when you
know, he's working for the forthe Ushers and when she's basically reinserting her
influence in their lives. There's ascene between carlu Gugino's character and Arthur Gordon

(16:18):
Pim, who I should I shouldprobably have said this first. He's played
by Mark Hamill. Mark Hamill,of course played Luke Skywalker and The Joker,
but he's very much a different characterin the Fall of the House of

(16:41):
Usher, different to either of them. On one hand, you've got I
mean, at one end, you'vegot Luke Skywalker, the hero of the
Star Wars movies, and at theother end you've got the Joker, who's
the embodiment of chaos and everything.Arthur Gordon Pim is is different. Now.

(17:03):
He's noble, but he's a badguy. He's respectable, but he's
a ghoul. He's he's just sohe's just so fascinating that you can't help
but wish that he would get hisown spin off series. You know,

(17:26):
that he would have his own hishis own TV movie or something where we
see pim as a young man,uh going on the kind of adventures that
Roderick believes him to have had whenhe was young, and and meeting Carla

(17:47):
Gugino's character for the first time,or at least encountering her for the first
time, and seeing the kinds ofthings that he that he has seen and
done throughout him his life. It'sat least as fascinating as the stories we
get about the different the different membersof the Usher household. And of course

(18:15):
it takes somebody of Mark Hamill's actingcaliber to add that kind of mystique to
this character. Yeah, and andreally it just drives home how all the

(18:36):
different elements of this mini series cometogether to make it such a great such
a great series. I mean,it obviously has a strong foundation with Edgar
Allan Poe's work. Mike Flanagan obviouslyis a man who is very well read

(18:57):
and does his homework and has adeep respect for the things that he reads
and the adaptations that he makes theworks that he adapts. He knows how
to take different characters from different storiesand not only update the stories for the

(19:22):
modern day, but also to helpthose characters come together and interact with each
other. He doesn't have. Imean, there aren't a lot of scenes
where Roderick's children are all are allinteracting with each other. But even when
they're by themselves, you know theywill talk about each other sometimes and you'll

(19:49):
be able to tell that these charactersdo all have a history with each other.
They've had to endure each other asthey all grew up. They had
to, they had to survive eachother basically. And and of course they're

(20:11):
all played by fantastic actors, youknow, like I said, Henry Thomas,
Kate siegeal other characters from other actors, from other Mike Flanagan works,
they all they all come together toplay these adult children of an aging scion,

(20:36):
of an aging patriarch, of ahouse that is just so powerful.
And yet they're all falling down,and they all deserve to fall down.
You can pity most of them,not all of them, but you can

(21:00):
feel, you can feel that theyall had a chance to not be the
people they turned out to be,the people who deserve to die. That's
one of the major themes in theFall of the House of Usher. The

(21:23):
choices that we all have in ourlives, the choices that lead us on
different paths, paths toward what wedon't always know. I mean, there's
a certain amount of destiny involved inthis story. The choices of our parents,

(21:48):
the choices that sort of box usinto certain roles, certain anticipated paths
in our lives. We can feellike we're stuck in them, and these

(22:18):
characters are sort of stuck in thembecause of decisions that were made before they
were born. But they're all giventheir own decisions every step of the way.
You see, you see that theyall have chances, opportunities, And

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while it doesn't it doesn't necessarily leaveyou feeling that they deserve what happens to
them, it certainly shows you howthings could have gone another way for a
lot of people, not just forthem, but for the people whose lives

(23:06):
they're affecting with their choices. Thething about the thing about life is is
that you can do your best withwhat you have, but other people are
doing their best with what they havetoo, and their choices will affect you.

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Choice and destiny, the dance ofthese two concepts, it's very central
to the fall of the House ofUsher. It's very it's almost hypnotic,

(23:55):
and like I say, if youcan get past the gory parts and the
the swearing and and uh and otherobjectionable elements, it's definitely worth watching.
Mike Flanagan is a storyteller who Ifeel is currently at the top of his

(24:18):
game now. So what's next forhim? He does have a couple of
projects in the works. I don'tknow too much about them. I don't
like to. I don't like todig into into what's coming. I don't

(24:44):
like to to think too much aboutthat because when you do, there's a
whole lot of stuff out there.You know, things like like this is
what I'd like to do, thisis what I'm working on now, but
maybe none of that stuff ever happens. I watch a lot of a lot
of react videos on YouTube, andevery time I watch somebody react to the

(25:07):
movie Clue, for example, yeah, they're all like like, oh,
I hear there's gonna be another Cluemovie with Ryan Reynolds. There's really not
that that was probably at one pointgoing to be true. But you know,
this is what happens when you know, you put a theory out there,

(25:30):
or you put a we're working onthis out there, or this person
has expressed interest in this out there. You know, there's a whole lot
of there's a whole lot of stuffthat might happen someday. But I don't
like to get into that because well, until it's actually happening, it just
disappoints me a lot. But Ican tell you what I what I personally

(25:57):
want my Flanagan to do in thefuture. In addition, to having a
little spin off a TV movie aboutArthur Gordon pim I want him. I
want his next installment in the Hauntingseries to be The Haunting of Overlook Hotel.

(26:26):
Now, if you don't recognize thatreference, I'm talking about the hotel
from Stephen King's The Shining Now,there was there was a movie by famed
director Stanley Kubrick starring Jack Nicholson.It's about a hotel way out in the

(26:53):
middle of nowhere, shut down forthe winter, and Jack Nicholson plays Jack
Torren, who's the caretaker of theOverlook Hotel. Now, this movie came
out in nineteen eighty and it wasvery It's very much considered a classic.

(27:18):
It's forty four years old this year, and a lot of people who've watched
it love it and think it's verygreat. Stanley Kubrick's obviously very talented,
but he deviated from Stephen King's originalnovel in several important ways. Now,

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this is one of the reasons whyI think Mike Flanagan could do a good
adaptation of it, because one ofthe ways that Stanley Kubrick's version deviates from
the novel is all right, obviouslyit's over forty years old, So I'm

(28:17):
just gonna go ahead and spoil itfor you if you haven't seen it.
Jack Torrance is slowly going mad inthe Overlook Hotel, not just from isolation,
but from the haunting of it.There are ghosts there. They're influencing
him. They're trying to drive himmad. They're trying to get him to

(28:41):
kill his family the way that theprevious caretaker killed his family. They're trying
to trap them all there basically onebig haunted hotel. But whereas Stanley Kubrick
Rick ends the movie with Jack Torrencejust simply going insane and freezing to death

(29:11):
while he's trying to kill his family. Doesn't succeed, but he tries to,
the original novel didn't end that way. The original novel ended with Jack
coming to his senses basically at thelast minute and essentially blowing up the hotel

(29:38):
while at the same time giving hisfamily a chance to escape. Now there
was a there was actually a TVminiseriies done in nineteen ninety seven, so
about so almost thirty years ago.Even Webber and Rebecca de Mourney play the

(30:04):
play Jack and his wife. Theya lot of people don't like this mini
series very much. It's much morefaithful to the novel. It's much more
faithful to what Stephen King originally wrote. He was he was more involved with
this adaptation than with Stanley Kubrick's adaptation. And the big problem with it for

(30:33):
some people is there were some specialeffects in the mini series and they were
about as about as good as youwould expect a TV mini series made in
the nineties to be. They weren'tvery good, let's just say that.

(30:55):
But it kept closer to the noveland it kept in that element of redemption
at the end for Jack, thatthat coming to his senses moment and helping
his family escape while he blows upthe Overlook Hotel. Like I said before,

(31:18):
this is something that that Mike Flanaganlikes to do in his stories.
He likes to have He likes tohave characters, you know, families kind
of grow apart for a while butthen grow back together. Yeah. I

(31:41):
think he would appreciate that element ofit, and I think he would keep
that in a in a new adaptation. But but I think he would also
add in more elements to it.You see, like I said, he
did, he did an adaptation ofDoctor Sleep, which was Stephen King's follow

(32:07):
up to The Shining. It wasit was a follow up novel to the
original novel, not to the notto the Stanley Kubrick movie. And so
when Mike Flanagan adapted Doctor Sleep intoa movie, he had to deal with

(32:31):
that because a lot of people whowould only have seen The Shining would only
have seen the movie version of TheShining would be confused by elements from the
novel that don't match up with Kubrick'smovie. But if if he but if,

(33:00):
but if Mike Flanagan had just donea straight sequel to The Shining movie,
then it would have people confused aboutwhere all the elements are from the
Doctor Sleep the novel. So hehad to try and try and adapt the

(33:21):
novel as if it were a sequelto Kubrick's Shining, And I think he
did a fairly good job. Imean, a lot of people have said
that he was up to the task. He tackled it, you know,
he he had a hard task aheadof him, but he managed to pull

(33:44):
it off. But I think thatif he did the Haunting of Overlook Hotel
that he wouldn't have to deal withthat. If he did a new mini
series that was adapting both both ofStephen King's novels, The Shining and Doctor

(34:08):
Sleep, then he would be ableto blend those stories together the way that
he blended together all of Poe's storiesand all of Henry James' stories, et
cetera. He wouldn't need to hewso closely to what Kubrick had done.

(34:30):
He would be a He would befree to do what the miniseries from the
nineties did and just go with thesource material, and he could add in
some nods to it, some eastereggs for Kubrick fans, but everybody would
know that this is a new adaptationof it and that it's meant to be

(34:51):
more faithful to the original. Andif he adds in The Shining and Doctor
Sleep, then he can do theDoctor Sleep adaptation the way it should have
been done. And more than that, he can give us more backstory on
the Overlook Hotel itself, because theOverlook Hotel is haunted, and it does

(35:16):
have a lot of interesting ghosts init that, frankly, we don't get
to learn too much about, certainlynot in Kubrick's movie. We learn a
little bit about them from the novelitself, and we even see a little
bit about them in the mini seriesfrom the nineties. But this would be

(35:43):
a way for him to tell thestory in different time periods, just like
he does with the Fall of theHouse of Usher, he shows us young
Roderick and Madeline, he shows usold Broderick and Madeline. Just like in
The Haunting of Hill House, heshows us the main characters as children growing

(36:04):
up in Hill House and as adults. So he could do that with the
Haunting of the Overlook Hotel. Hecould show us not just the two different
time periods of the Shining and DoctorSleep, but he could show us where
all these ghosts came from. Hecould show us their backstories. We would

(36:28):
finally understand a lot of really confusingscenes from Kubrick's movie, a lot of
confusing characters as well. And Iknow that we already have all these different

(36:49):
adaptations. We have Kubricks, wehave the mini series from the nineties,
we have Doctor Sleep. Why dothem over again? Well, first of
all, like I said, it'sa chance to add in these new elements,
and it's a chance to add inthe different to add in the different

(37:15):
time periods. As if they're allone story. But beyond that, I
feel this is what fans of StephenKing would really want, especially Mike Flanagan.
We know he's a big Stephen Kingfan. I feel that fans of

(37:37):
Stephen King are like fans of Lordof the Rings who were just waiting for
that one, big, faithful,big budget adaptation back in the early two
thousands, and it was such agreat adaptation. It may have left a

(37:57):
few things out, but it wasdefinitely He's something that they could all hang
their hat on and say, Wow, we finally have it. We don't
really have the Shining. Yeah,we have the the TV movie, the
TV mini series from the nineties,and we have Kubrick's Shining, but we

(38:21):
don't really have Stephen King's shining.I think we should have it. I
would love to see it myself.I've watched the miniseries, I've watched the
movie, I've watched Doctor Sleep,and I've watched Mike Flanagan working on other

(38:50):
projects, some of them Stephen Kingprojects, some of them not. I
know he can do it. Iknow he would be the best at it,
and well, it's something for himto do. Okay, that's uh.

(39:15):
That's about all I've got on thissubject. Most of his most of
Mike Flannagan's work is available on Netflix. You can watch it all theirs.
Uh. Like I said, thereis a lot of violence and gore in
the Fall of the House of Usher, but if you're a po fan then

(39:35):
you should expect that anyway. AndI think you would really love it and
and I would also really love itif you would read all of my stories.
You know they're available on most ereaders. Links are available on the
homepage of my website. Thank youfor listening. I will talk to you more like