Speaker 1: Oh get it's show tied.
Speaker 2: People say, good money to see this movie.
Speaker 3: When they go out to a theater, they want clothed sodas, popcorn,
Speaker 3: and no monsters in the protection booth.
Speaker 1: Everyone pretend podcasting isn't boring. Cut it off.
Speaker 4: My goal is an effects artist to show you something
Speaker 4: that there's no way you could have followed yourself.
Speaker 3: Suddenly we had unleashed the writer's minds. They couldn't show
Speaker 3: any story they wanted to. The whole business exploded and
Speaker 3: we did indeed become lock stars.
Speaker 2: I watched this.
Speaker 4: It's more than just a makeup artist. They do practical effects.
Speaker 4: You like to be scared of the movies, well apparently
Speaker 4: you're not alone.
Speaker 2: Eighties four was a big thing. It was so black,
Speaker 2: it's so hot.
Speaker 5: In fact, it's even gained a certain glamor.
Speaker 1: You ever been watching a movie or promercio, You found
Speaker 1: yourself wondering how they do that.
Speaker 3: DEEE.
Speaker 1: Johnson creates the monsters.
Speaker 3: So like I had to prove myself because I wasn't
Speaker 3: good at sports. I had this one thing that I
Speaker 3: could do. That making the best monster I could made
Speaker 3: me kind of belong. Rick Baker my hero, he had
Speaker 3: just done the Cantena sequence for Star Wars.
Speaker 4: He gave me his phone number and.
Speaker 3: He said, listen, you ever make out to Hollywood, gimme
Speaker 3: a pop.
Speaker 4: I loaded up my car. We're just a bunch of kids.
Speaker 4: We don't know how to do this because it's probably
Speaker 4: not possible in the first place.
Speaker 2: They come out of the woodwork. They're so strange.
Speaker 3: If they didn't have this thing to do, they'd probably
Speaker 3: be working at a gas station where.
Speaker 2: We provided a lot of worker. The especial effects guy.
Speaker 4: Went home and bought ten pounds of coocaine.
Speaker 2: I would not have to see.
Speaker 4: James Cameron is the only director that made me cry.
Speaker 4: But I did love it, but because he made my work.
Speaker 4: Without it, you have the work and then you partying,
Speaker 4: which is phenomenal. Steve's favorite word must have been like,
Speaker 4: this really can't be done. We gotta figure out how
Speaker 4: to do it. I just wanted to create fun stuff.
Speaker 3: Our stars are fading, and now technology wipes it out.
Speaker 3: Now where the dinosaurs they put so much love energy,
Speaker 3: The audience thinks it's done digitally anyway.
Speaker 2: He's the architect of his own misfortune.
Speaker 5: Steve was kind of in this other realm.
Speaker 4: These drugs do thank you better tell they take you
Speaker 4: down and I snapped. Really is extraordinary. All these kids had.
Speaker 5: Such a bit fair.
Speaker 4: I don't think Steve ever got the credit that he
Speaker 4: really deserved for a lot of things he did.
Speaker 3: I'm gonna make some of the greatest movies over and
Speaker 3: then I'm just gonna slam it in a great frange
Speaker 3: a brick wall. Don't jump from the smoking wreck, kids,
Speaker 3: this movie's gonna ruin what's left of my ragged career.
Speaker 5: Hey, folks, welcome to a special episode of the Projection Booth.
Speaker 5: I'm your host Mike. On this episode, I'm talking with
Speaker 5: Nick Taylor. He is the director of the new documentary Rubberhead,
Speaker 5: The Life and Monsters of Steve Johnson. If you are
Speaker 5: into effects, especially those from the eighties and nineties, you
Speaker 5: are definitely going to be interested in this film. Even
Speaker 5: if you're not, you're going to be interested in this film.
Speaker 5: It's a lot of fun. Film is getting its premiere
Speaker 5: over at the Fantasia Film Festival in Montreal, Quebec. If
Speaker 5: you are within the son of my voice and able
Speaker 5: to see this movie, definitely check it out. Thanks so
Speaker 5: much for listening, and I hope you enjoyed this interview.
Speaker 5: Can you tell me how you got involved in show business?
Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely so. I've been a writer for dread Central
Speaker 2: for about six seven years now. I've had a podcast
Speaker 2: on horror filmmaking. Spent a lot of time just trying
Speaker 2: to figure out how to get into the industry. But
Speaker 2: I've been involved in horror journalism for a while, and
Speaker 2: there was a movie I was working on from like
Speaker 2: for a really long time. I was working on making
Speaker 2: an interactive VR zombie movie, and I spent a lot
Speaker 2: of time doing that. Didn't end up becoming anything because
Speaker 2: it was basically trying to do something that would just
Speaker 2: like millions of dollars for a lot lot less, and
Speaker 2: so spun my wheels on that for many years. But
Speaker 2: it taught me how to write. It taught me how
Speaker 2: to do a lot of things. But yeah, from there,
Speaker 2: just wanted to somehow be peripherally involved in the industry
Speaker 2: and became a journalist. I was writing for Dread and
Speaker 2: started my podcast in the Nick Taylor Horror Show, where
Speaker 2: I talked to horror filmmakers and directors and basically asked
Speaker 2: them how they got their movies made, which was essentially
Speaker 2: my film school because I never went to film school.
Speaker 2: Wanted to learn how you got movies made from people
Speaker 2: who did it. And I have a lot of friends
Speaker 2: who went to film school, and I hear a lot
Speaker 2: of the same thing, which is, it's great, you learn
Speaker 2: a lot. It's fun to just go to college for movies.
Speaker 2: You meet a lot of great people. But there's so
Speaker 2: many practical aspects of filmmaking that they don't cover. So
Speaker 2: I wanted my podcast to basically beat the answer that,
Speaker 2: but specifically for horror filmmaking. So I just spent years
Speaker 2: interviewing horror directors and learning how they got their movies made,
Speaker 2: and then eventually got around and making my own. Yeah,
Speaker 2: basically it.
Speaker 5: Well, and how did you choose Steve Johnson as your
Speaker 5: subject for this?
Speaker 2: I met Steve at Monster Palooza, and I've been a
Speaker 2: fan of his since I was literally a child, and
Speaker 2: I was a kind of a lonely horror fan. I
Speaker 2: didn't have many other friends who were into the genre,
Speaker 2: and I was into all this weird monster stuff and
Speaker 2: was always drawing monsters and sculpting them. And I had
Speaker 2: teachers at the time who discouraged it because it was
Speaker 2: scaring other kids and things like that. So I think
Speaker 2: I was led to feel like sort of an outcast
Speaker 2: and a misfit. And when you're like six or seven,
Speaker 2: I can make you insecure, and I think a lot
Speaker 2: of us horror fans went through that as a kid.
Speaker 2: You're not sure what to make of you being drawn
Speaker 2: to all sorts of weird stuff and blood and gore
Speaker 2: and monsters and things like that. So I felt like
Speaker 2: a little bit like an outcast. But then I see
Speaker 2: Scare Tactics, and I see Steve and Lena, and there's
Speaker 2: this really cool, strapping, handsome guy who's at the top
Speaker 2: of the industry doing these amazing movies, making a living,
Speaker 2: doing all this stuff that I love making monsters and
Speaker 2: blood and gore effects. And I was just like, oh
Speaker 2: my god, this is first of all, this is a living,
Speaker 2: But second of all, there's this really cool guy who's
Speaker 2: doing it. And I really immediately looked up to him
Speaker 2: because he kind of validated me, you know, it didn't
Speaker 2: make me feel so alone. So I just it gave
Speaker 2: me sort of a permission to pursue this as a
Speaker 2: real career, that you can take this passion for something
Speaker 2: that's so obscure and you can actually make a living
Speaker 2: out of it, because he was at the top of
Speaker 2: the industry around that time. So I felt sort of
Speaker 2: a spiritual connection to him at a young age. And
Speaker 2: then later many years later, met him at Monster Palooza
Speaker 2: and we started talking and got to know each other,
Speaker 2: and I learned all of these different stories from his
Speaker 2: life was helping him promote a project he was working on,
Speaker 2: where he would tell me a story from his overall
Speaker 2: life and I would pitch it to the media the
Speaker 2: next day. And it was like storytime with Steve for
Speaker 2: about a week, and every story was just one was
Speaker 2: more insane and amazing than the next, and they all
Speaker 2: involved drugs and alcohol. They all took place on these major,
Speaker 2: enormous movies like Ghostbusters, and he would tell them and
Speaker 2: he would be so hilarious, and I just wanted to
Speaker 2: recreate that feeling of just kind of being at a
Speaker 2: bar with this fascinating guy who lived this incredible life
Speaker 2: and just, you know, drink after drink, he's telling you
Speaker 2: his life story, but in any case, I'm jumping all
Speaker 2: over the timeline. He would tell me these wonderful stories,
Speaker 2: I'd pitched them. One of them went viral. There was
Speaker 2: a whole story about Steve doing just insane amounts of
Speaker 2: cocaine to create slanmer for Ghostbusters that bloody disgusting. Put
Speaker 2: that story out and it went fairly viral, and it
Speaker 2: was in different languages, which was really funny. After a while,
Speaker 2: I was like, my god, your life story is amazing.
Speaker 2: Somebody should tell it, and I think it should be me.
Speaker 2: And yeah, it took years because we were as indie
Speaker 2: as a get, but yeah, that was the origin of it.
Speaker 5: Well, yeah, I mean every film is a struggle, right,
Speaker 5: It's like a battle. Some people describe it as So
Speaker 5: what was your battles? What were the things that really
Speaker 5: kind of hurt you or were stopping you, and how'd
Speaker 5: you overcome them?
Speaker 2: Well, it took a long time because we would just
Speaker 2: shoot what we could when we could, and then when
Speaker 2: we ran out of money, we would stop and we'd
Speaker 2: kind of pick it up and put it down, which
Speaker 2: luckily you can do very easily with documentaries because it's
Speaker 2: you don't need you know, we shot this movie over
Speaker 2: the course of many years. Steve's appearance fluctuates a little bit,
Speaker 2: but it doesn't matter really, So luckily you can do that.
Speaker 2: So I think just the eddy nature of it was
Speaker 2: a bit of a challenge. We pitched it for years
Speaker 2: and we kept hearing the same thing from major players,
Speaker 2: like we love this, we love Steve, but it's too
Speaker 2: niche for us, And I mean that was good feedback.
Speaker 2: But from day one, I did want to make something
Speaker 2: that was at niche, that didn't feel like a fan documentary,
Speaker 2: that felt more like an actual, dimensionalized ortrait of an artist,
Speaker 2: albeit a troubled one in this case, but also an
Speaker 2: exploration of this history of practical effects. I wanted the
Speaker 2: movie to stand on its own two feet as a
Speaker 2: compelling character study, but also be something that was fun
Speaker 2: and really amusing for horror and effects fans as well.
Speaker 2: But yeah, I think so those are the challenges. Documentaries
Speaker 2: are incredibly complicated. I had no idea they were as complicated.
Speaker 2: I mean, usually when you're shooting a narrative feature, you
Speaker 2: shoot it and you edit. There's always more to it.
Speaker 2: Of course, there's reshoots and there's complexities and difficulties. But
Speaker 2: with a doc you shoot all of the stuff, and
Speaker 2: you keep shooting. You don't know when to stop shooting.
Speaker 2: You keep discovering new material, there's all this arc, endless
Speaker 2: amounts of archival that you can get, rabbit holes you
Speaker 2: can go down. So you have just all of this
Speaker 2: material and you have to somehow be a puzzle together.
Speaker 2: And there's always something you don't have, There's always something
Speaker 2: you don't know that you don't have, and it's definitely complex.
Speaker 2: So I think navigating that was certainly a challenge.
Speaker 5: Well, how was Steve to work with as a documentary
Speaker 5: subject and was he open to being a documentary subject?
Speaker 2: I mean, we had a lot of fun. He was
Speaker 2: a lot of fun. I think I kept saying, like
Speaker 2: one of my jokes was the reason was taking so
Speaker 2: long is because I don't want it to end, because
Speaker 2: it's just so much fun to work on. And Luckily,
Speaker 2: he's very self effacing. He doesn't shy away from talking
Speaker 2: about anything. Really. He would just very easily talk about
Speaker 2: the drugs and debauchery and absolute insanity, but also be
Speaker 2: really honest about bridges that he's burned and things he's
Speaker 2: done wrong and stuff like that. And I think he's
Speaker 2: just had a lot of time to reflect and he's
Speaker 2: very honest, which I think is one of the things
Speaker 2: that I was very refreshed by it, but it was
Speaker 2: a lot of fun. It was definitely a lot of fun.
Speaker 5: Well, you talked about your podcast and how that was
Speaker 5: kind of like your film school by talking with all
Speaker 5: these people, what lessons from that were able to apply
Speaker 5: to this dock.
Speaker 2: With every episode I would do with a director, I
Speaker 2: would summarize like the key learnings that I got at
Speaker 2: the end of every episode, like here's what we learned today.
Speaker 2: And I think over time these lessons just especially me
Speaker 2: going through the exercise of listening to them again and
Speaker 2: then coming up with internalizing and then externalizing what were
Speaker 2: the key lessons learned here? Really helped ingrain directorial sensibilities
Speaker 2: into my head and instinct, which was really good. But
Speaker 2: I think one of the big things was trusting your intuition.
Speaker 2: But there's a counterbalance to them, like you do have
Speaker 2: to trust your intuition, but you don't want to fall
Speaker 2: in love with your own voice too much either. Where
Speaker 2: I did have it's like you're turning into a frequency,
Speaker 2: like the movie had a frequency that I was tuned into.
Speaker 2: But I know myself and I know my sensibility, and
Speaker 2: I know I'm a huge fan. I'm a horror fan.
Speaker 2: I'm a huge fan of practical effects, So there was
Speaker 2: all this cool stuff that I wanted in the movie
Speaker 2: that Luckily, I had a wonderful editor, Joe Krings, who
Speaker 2: is not a horror fan and he's sinophile and an
Speaker 2: incredible editor, and he was able to keep things very objective.
Speaker 2: So then having the counterbalance of the right collaborator is critical.
Speaker 2: I mean, I learned it is your job as a
Speaker 2: director to not necessarily have all of the vision and
Speaker 2: all of the answers, but to surround yourself with people
Speaker 2: who will help you find it, who can counterbalance and basically,
Speaker 2: you know, save you from yourself in certain cases. Just
Speaker 2: working with people who can counterbalance you men regard was
Speaker 2: a really big lesson.
Speaker 5: Obviously you've got Steve as your primary source, but what
Speaker 5: were some of those other rich veins that you were
Speaker 5: able to uncover while you're going through this?
Speaker 2: Well, we in choosing who else to interview. We originally
Speaker 2: were going down the path of trying to get some
Speaker 2: major names and bigger, big filmmakers talking, but it's very
Speaker 2: time consuming. It is we really difficult to do that.
Speaker 2: You have to chase them down, and even if you
Speaker 2: do get them, it's like Okay, they're between scenes, maybe
Speaker 2: you can get something, but their energy is not going
Speaker 2: to be great and they're not going to be focused
Speaker 2: on you, and it would have been amazing. It definitely
Speaker 2: helps the prestige of a movie to have big names
Speaker 2: in it. But we started going down that road and
Speaker 2: we were chasing a few names, and then we got
Speaker 2: to the point where we're like, you know what, this
Speaker 2: would be way more intimate if we got people who
Speaker 2: really knew Steve really well, and we made this more
Speaker 2: of an intricate portrait, so that we just decided to
Speaker 2: focus on that, one of which was John Landis, who's
Speaker 2: a major director, and Linea quickly was a just legendary
Speaker 2: stream queen. So we were able to get some some
Speaker 2: pretty great names, but they knew Steve really well, and
Speaker 2: they knew him personally, they knew him professionally, So we
Speaker 2: did want this to be a very personal story, which
Speaker 2: dictated who were some of the people we talked to.
Speaker 2: But I think Linea was a real game changer in
Speaker 2: terms of the dimension. She was able to bring the
Speaker 2: Steve because she knew him personally and she knew him professionally.
Speaker 2: She lived with him, they were married, but She also
Speaker 2: knew the horror industry incredibly well. They were on multiple
Speaker 2: movies together, so she saw every side of him during
Speaker 2: one of his big pinnacle, you know, seasons of life,
Speaker 2: so she was able to see a lot of that.
Speaker 2: She was able to see the destructive aspects of his addictions,
Speaker 2: but also his work ethic also is genius, and she
Speaker 2: genuinely loved them. They genuinely loved each other. I mean
Speaker 2: there was a real tragedy in their ultimate you know, splitting.
Speaker 2: So she was wonderful to talk to you. There's very
Speaker 2: rich conversations with her.
Speaker 5: Frankly, I can't think of a better audience for you
Speaker 5: with the Dock than Fantasia. It's kind of feeling pretty
Speaker 5: great to have your first movie being able to premiere there.
Speaker 2: I'm very honored. Yeah, yeah, it does feel great and
Speaker 2: I can't wait. It's really wonderful. But it was very
Speaker 2: humbled in touched that they chose us.
Speaker 5: Nick. Where can people go to find out more about
Speaker 5: the movie and where it's playing near them.
Speaker 2: You can follow me on Instagram and I am Nick Taylor,
Speaker 2: or on our production company's website, American Nightmare dot co.
Speaker 2: It's not dot com but dot co will definitely be
Speaker 2: posting updates there and if you're gonna be in Fantasia,
Speaker 2: come check us out July twenty third and twenty sixth.
Speaker 5: Fantastic, Nick Taylor, thank you so much for your time, sir.
Speaker 5: Good luck at your premiere.
Speaker 2: Thank you, Mike.
Speaker 1: Goodbye rubber head, so long, boob going blower in right cube,
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Speaker 1: told my baby nice, please don't blurt around and don't
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Speaker 1: but she said goodbye rubber head, so long, boob going blower,
Speaker 1: and I got a brand news sugar cube. It's a
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Speaker 1: puzzle phone with a memory of what she said. Good
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Speaker 1: her face get red? She must have burned that the
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Speaker 1: doo a plang of a ram sugar cube. It's a
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Speaker 1: ba boo boo boo boom