Speaker 1: You are now listening to the Someone's Favorite Productions podcast network.
Speaker 1: At one point I had to make Olympics, so I
Speaker 1: always had a job very politically incorrect back then.
Speaker 2: Hello there, and welcome back.
Speaker 1: What is this place? Is connected? Disconnected? It's connected, disconnected, disconnected, disconnected?
Speaker 3: Is connected disconnected, disconnected, disconnected, disconnected, disconnected, disconnected, disconnected.
Speaker 2: I'm starting to feel disconnected.
Speaker 4: Work the number that has been disconnected.
Speaker 2: Hello there, and welcome back to the Disconnected.
Speaker 5: I honestly don't even know how to introduce this because
Speaker 5: I'm here with one of, in my opinion, the most
Speaker 5: esteemed incredible contributors to the horror genre over the last
Speaker 5: four at forty years. That's kind of crazy to say
Speaker 5: out loud like that, mister Brian Usma, thank you so.
Speaker 2: Much for being a part of this.
Speaker 1: Nice to be here.
Speaker 5: I don't even know where to start. You've had a
Speaker 5: hand in so many incredible things over the years, from
Speaker 5: producing titles with massive pedigree like Dolls. I Love Dolls,
Speaker 5: one of my favorites of all time, writing on things
Speaker 5: like Honey, I Shrunk the Kids, and following that up
Speaker 5: with one of the most disgusting shots put in film
Speaker 5: and society.
Speaker 2: We all thank you for.
Speaker 1: It, well, thank you for enjoying them.
Speaker 5: So you have such an interesting and globe trotting, diverse
Speaker 5: background that got you to the entertainment industry.
Speaker 2: How how do you feel you got here?
Speaker 5: What is the first handful of steps that really got
Speaker 5: you to where you were established?
Speaker 1: You mean being able to make money making.
Speaker 5: Movies, even just getting two movies. I mean, you know,
Speaker 5: growing up in other countries and then working as a
Speaker 5: carpenter and all that.
Speaker 1: Well, growing up, I grew up there were movies. There
Speaker 1: were movies everywhere, so I grew up. And then we
Speaker 1: didn't have TV when I was a kid until I
Speaker 1: was about seven or eight because they didn't have it
Speaker 1: in Panama where I lived. But we went to the movies.
Speaker 1: One of the first movies when I was very young
Speaker 1: that I think I must have been six or something.
Speaker 1: I think maybe even earlier. Maybe see anyway, we used
Speaker 1: to go to the movies on Sunday, the Kiddy matinees,
Speaker 1: Nice and I and I saw The Creature with the
Speaker 1: Adam Brain and it just really you know, gave me
Speaker 1: sleepless nights. Nice And then the next you know, fantastic movie,
Speaker 1: genre movie. I remember, was the Seventh Voyage of Sindbad.
Speaker 2: Oh wow, that was you know.
Speaker 1: And the skeleton part really scared me, and the and
Speaker 1: gave me nightmares. And then of course the woman turning
Speaker 1: jumping into the urn with the snake and coming out
Speaker 1: as the snake woman was very disturbing to me. I
Speaker 1: didn't quite know eye. And then another big genre movie
Speaker 1: that was very influential to me around that same era
Speaker 1: when I was, you know, in grammar school, was The
Speaker 1: Ten Commandments.
Speaker 2: Oh interesting, which.
Speaker 1: Was a which you would think that's you know, it's
Speaker 1: a biblical epic, but it was made for all audiences,
Speaker 1: you know, back then. But it had all this kind
Speaker 1: of real genre stuff like rods that get turned into
Speaker 1: snakes and turning the sea red blood and then this
Speaker 1: green smoke going through the village killing killing children, and
Speaker 1: the sea opening up and all this stuff. So like
Speaker 1: a big genre movie. But then when Moses goes up
Speaker 1: to abount Sinai, the all the israel Israelites worship this
Speaker 1: golden calf and start having a big orgy. Now it was,
Speaker 1: I guess g rated, but it was an orgy, you know,
Speaker 1: and that really affected me. And when I did start
Speaker 1: making movies. I would often try to figure out where
Speaker 1: my default instincts came from, because I think anybody, everybody's
Speaker 1: coming is coming from something. Most people that make movies,
Speaker 1: even on the huge level, are trying originally or trying
Speaker 1: to make movies they loved when they were kids, of course,
Speaker 1: and I think that's why I have this propensity to
Speaker 1: think that a good movie should end with a big,
Speaker 1: crazy origin. Because of the Ten Commandments. That's how it ended, you.
Speaker 2: Know, well, thank God for that.
Speaker 1: It wasn't good. What they were doing was clearly not good,
Speaker 1: but it was very satisfying. I mean, Moses comes down
Speaker 1: and puts an end to it, so it's not like
Speaker 1: it's a horror movie. It ends well, you know, so anyway,
Speaker 1: and I did. I saw all the all the you know,
Speaker 1: like the the House on Haunted Hill and the Tabler
Speaker 1: and the Univers coming out. Then I saw that. When
Speaker 1: I was first I only saw the trailers of Hammer,
Speaker 1: but that was pretty scary, and then of course I
Speaker 1: saw all the Hammers. But by the time I got
Speaker 1: to middle school, I was all into Corbin's Poe series.
Speaker 1: And you know, I saw Psycho when it first came out,
Speaker 1: and I was like, yeah, that was that boy. I was.
Speaker 1: I couldn't take a shower for weeks and all that time.
Speaker 1: It's very disturbing to me, this idea that there could
Speaker 1: be somebody else inside you, you know. Yeah, but so anyway,
Speaker 1: but I did, I did read. I read. You know,
Speaker 1: it was really into fairy tales when I first started reading.
Speaker 1: And that's basically the origins of I guess you'd call
Speaker 1: it folk core. It comes ultimately from folk wore. And
Speaker 1: we when I was a kid, you know, not having
Speaker 1: your TV, and if we did have it, it'd be
Speaker 1: a few hours a day and just be kind of
Speaker 1: like the news and stuff. But we used to gather,
Speaker 1: you know, at dusk, the kids, and somebody always knew
Speaker 1: some uncle, who's somebody crawled out of a grave, or
Speaker 1: there's some kind of wood who you know, there's sort
Speaker 1: of monkey spaw style of horror. It's just the whole
Speaker 1: grisly fact of it. And then I was I was
Speaker 1: raised a Roman Catholic in and my father was a
Speaker 1: was a practicing Catholic, so I would go to church.
Speaker 1: I went to church faithfully, and and I lived in
Speaker 1: of course, these Catholic kind of third world countries, where
Speaker 1: you know, they'd have processions through this. I mean, it's
Speaker 1: very heavy, and of course in you know, Catholicism is
Speaker 1: all about you know, eating the flesh and drinking the
Speaker 1: blood and you know, suffering and you know, and so
Speaker 1: that I think that had a good effect on me.
Speaker 1: I always thought that, especially the Western kind of horror
Speaker 1: basics of Frankenstein, Dracula, and I guess Jekyl Hyder or
Speaker 1: the werewolf kind of blend together, that it works best
Speaker 1: in like a kind of Christian Roman Catholic tradition where
Speaker 1: because you know, in the Catholic Christian the devil and
Speaker 1: the demons are real. This is not right, this is
Speaker 1: for real, you know, And so it's not much of
Speaker 1: a jump from there to you know, thinking that vampires
Speaker 1: could show up. It's true, and I always thought it
Speaker 1: kind of took a little away from it when it
Speaker 1: would get to you know, when it didn't have that
Speaker 1: sort of religious underpinning. But then when you'd see the
Speaker 1: Asian non Christian based or you'd see that they do
Speaker 1: quite well with their vampires and were wolves and ghosts
Speaker 1: and stuff. You just have to settle into the into
Speaker 1: the you know the culture of it. But that was
Speaker 1: kind of how I got I think that's how I
Speaker 1: got a taste for horror. I just always liked it.
Speaker 1: And then when I ended up having to make a living,
Speaker 1: I grew up. I didn't grow up anywhere near LA,
Speaker 1: and back in the fifties, sixties, even seventies, you didn't.
Speaker 1: I mean, movies were just basically made in LA and
Speaker 1: to a certain degree in New York, but mostly LA.
Speaker 1: And I didn't know anybody in the movies. All I
Speaker 1: knew about was from what I could read. But you know,
Speaker 1: I remember seeing Day for Night, that true movie. You know,
Speaker 1: in the sixties, art movies were a real big thing,
Speaker 1: you know, that new way for stuff on tour. Stuff
Speaker 1: was just real entertaining. And in that Day for Night,
Speaker 1: it's basically kind of a musical about making a movie.
Speaker 1: So you see the crew making the movie, and you
Speaker 1: see all these different people performing functions, and that sort
Speaker 1: of became the basis of what I knew about what
Speaker 1: making a movie was. But I never thought that. It
Speaker 1: never occurred to me that you could actually make a
Speaker 1: living doing TV or movies. It didn't It didn't seem
Speaker 1: too far too far thatched. Of course, now everybody can
Speaker 1: and everybody does make movies always, all the time, constantly.
Speaker 1: But when I I didn't, really I didn't start. I try.
Speaker 1: I started shooting with a sixteen millimeter camera when I
Speaker 1: was given a Bolex sixteen millimeter wind up three lens.
Speaker 1: These were these Bulex cameras that were used for news
Speaker 1: gathering in the seventies. When a crew would go out
Speaker 1: to do the news, they would have that and they
Speaker 1: didn't have sound or anything. It was and you had
Speaker 1: three lenses. You wound it up for like one hundred feet.
Speaker 1: I got one, and at that time I was living
Speaker 1: in the country, and I started shooting my goats and
Speaker 1: my turkeys and stuff. And then I projected at night
Speaker 1: on my projector after I developed it. It would be
Speaker 1: in black and white. If I went, wow, it's like bergman,
Speaker 1: this is a movie. And so then I started. I
Speaker 1: tried making a short film, and because I got a
Speaker 1: I got a Beta Max. Nice first in my neighborhood
Speaker 1: to have a Beta Max. And then I recorded a
Speaker 1: couple of movies and watched them over and over. One
Speaker 1: was Kubrick's The Killing and the other was The Spiral Staircase.
Speaker 1: The first time I could see that there's there's shots.
Speaker 1: There's not just scenes, there's shots. And that was a
Speaker 1: big eye opener for me. That then I started realizing,
Speaker 1: you know, because I could go back and forward, I
Speaker 1: could control it. When I went to the movies, it
Speaker 1: just happened close as I could get because I wanted
Speaker 1: to get inside it. Of course, one I started making movies,
Speaker 1: I wanted to see the frame. I went just the
Speaker 1: other way. I don't want to be immersed in it.
Speaker 1: But so anyway, that was, you know, I started getting
Speaker 1: interested in it and started reading like Box Office Magazine
Speaker 1: and Weekly Variety and going, God, maybe you could could
Speaker 1: you make a money? You know, I'll try making a movie.
Speaker 1: I did a short film. I thought it was great
Speaker 1: till I showed it to my friends, and then it
Speaker 1: turned out it wasn't, you know. And I'm like that
Speaker 1: as a cook too. When I cook for myself, it's
Speaker 1: just delicious. But if I have to share the meal
Speaker 1: with somebody, I start realizing it's not that good, you know.
Speaker 1: And so then when I decided to try to make
Speaker 1: a I thought, I'm going to try to make a
Speaker 1: real movie. I'll go out and so I put an
Speaker 1: ad in Variety that said horror movie director wanted, and
Speaker 1: I got. This is before fax machines, It's like nineteen
Speaker 1: eighty two. I got like hundreds of letters. I would
Speaker 1: say ninety percent were from LA and ten ten or
Speaker 1: twenty percent were from New York. Well, New York was
Speaker 1: easy because I could drive up there from North Carolina.
Speaker 1: But La i'd have to fly out for a few
Speaker 1: days and I just have meetings all day. And then
Speaker 1: I started realizing that everybody that I met up there
Speaker 1: was just like me. There were people who were from
Speaker 1: somewhere else, but they wanted to make movies. And of
Speaker 1: course the ones I met were the ones that wanted
Speaker 1: to make genre movies. And you know, not having gone
Speaker 1: to film school or had any any kind of education
Speaker 1: in entertainment, I just picked it up from meeting people.
Speaker 1: And the first time I went to a film market
Speaker 1: it was the American Film Market. And when I saw that,
Speaker 1: I went, Oh, this is how you do it. You
Speaker 1: kind of make the movie, you go and sell it
Speaker 1: to all these countries. Because this was the great era
Speaker 1: of video, when anybody could go to market with your movie,
Speaker 1: which is kind of why the movies of the eighties
Speaker 1: have this unique characteristic. They were being financed by video
Speaker 1: when the majors wouldn't get into it. And so there's
Speaker 1: a lot of people, a lot of people making companies,
Speaker 1: producing and selling movies who had who would never be
Speaker 1: let into the big thing, could never worked in the
Speaker 1: big time, you know. Once I saw that, saw how
Speaker 1: that worked, and everybody was kind of doing it right.
Speaker 1: I was lucky because I I raised the money to
Speaker 1: make my own movie so I could start out at
Speaker 1: the top.
Speaker 5: It's a smart man, that's a good choice. So around
Speaker 5: this time, one Stuart Gordon came into your life. Obviously
Speaker 5: Stuart has passed now and a lot of people have
Speaker 5: really begun to discover the magic that Stuart was and
Speaker 5: you and you and Stuart had a lot in common.
Speaker 5: I mean, showing, you know, these crazy practical effects that
Speaker 5: are depraved and terrifying, but also with this just amazing
Speaker 5: sense of humor with it that we all come to love.
Speaker 5: Tell us about Stuart Gordon those early days.
Speaker 1: What did you like When I was looking for a director.
Speaker 1: It eventually led to me going to Chicago and meeting Stuart,
Speaker 1: who at that time was a had been working for
Speaker 1: ten years in theater. Yeah, so he had never made
Speaker 1: a movie. But he was a professional. He was the
Speaker 1: creative director of his own, his own theater, and he
Speaker 1: loved to shock people because the first time he really
Speaker 1: got any, got his picture on the front page of
Speaker 1: the paper in Madison, Wisconsin, where he went to college,
Speaker 1: was because he in college he put on a theatrical
Speaker 1: play version of Peter Pan where all the actors were naked.
Speaker 1: You got to remember, this is in the hippie times,
Speaker 1: and so the police shut it down and there was
Speaker 1: a lot of go and Stuart loved it. He was like,
Speaker 1: this is what I want. And in the organic theater
Speaker 1: that he ran, he did regularly. He did, you know,
Speaker 1: just regular plays, but he did really ambitious sci fi
Speaker 1: and kind of horror stuff. And I just I went
Speaker 1: to see a couple of them, and I thought, Wow,
Speaker 1: this guy, I like, I could work with him, and
Speaker 1: he knows what he's doing, you know. And so he
Speaker 1: had already co written a pilot for a reanimator TV show,
Speaker 1: and so we developed it into a feature and shot it.
Speaker 1: We Luckily for both of us, he was of course,
Speaker 1: I knew he liked he was excessive, so I like that,
Speaker 1: and I also also he was lucky that I did
Speaker 1: want that, and we didn't have to argue with anybody.
Speaker 1: And I wanted it to be very exploitative because as
Speaker 1: a horror fan, I liked bad horror movies, of course,
Speaker 1: and not bad regular movies, but bad horror movies I like,
Speaker 1: which I think is the definition of a horror fan.
Speaker 1: The the so I thought, you know, I'm risking I
Speaker 1: had two kids by then. I thought, man, I'm risking
Speaker 1: my family's future. Is I'm borrowing money? So I know
Speaker 1: when I watched horror movies, the worst thing are the
Speaker 1: horror movies that sort of pull their punches thinking they're
Speaker 1: going to get some kind of respect. So my feeling
Speaker 1: was that I did, and I told him this. I said,
Speaker 1: I just we just have to make it real entertaining,
Speaker 1: which means very bloody and very sexy and just all
Speaker 1: the way so that the movie's no good, I know,
Speaker 1: there'll still be an audience sort you know. So that
Speaker 1: was that was the you know, And luckily, of course
Speaker 1: I didn't even I didn't choose to take it to
Speaker 1: the MPAA for our rating because I knew they wouldn't
Speaker 1: wouldn't They would just take out all the all the
Speaker 1: good stuff, and you know, it meant it was difficult.
Speaker 1: We had to you know, we had to put an
Speaker 1: X rating on it because that's what you could if
Speaker 1: it wasn't rated. And now X is just sex, but
Speaker 1: back then it was also you know, it's just anything
Speaker 1: that like obsity. Yeah, it's it's like anything, you know,
Speaker 1: anything could be X rated if it was just adult.
Speaker 1: That was the original idea. It would just be adult
Speaker 1: because they only had g rated that are rated, you know, right.
Speaker 1: But but anyway, that's as Stewart used to say, we
Speaker 1: brought out the worst in each other. Well we were
Speaker 1: really very really very different. I mean, Stuart is a
Speaker 1: lifelong kind of kind of director, entertainer put on shows,
Speaker 1: and I just sort of came into it, you know,
Speaker 1: when I was thirty years old, going hey, what else
Speaker 1: am I going to do? Let's try this. I learned
Speaker 1: from just being on the set and hiring people and
Speaker 1: going through the process. But I never had any you know,
Speaker 1: I didn't have any education at it. And Stewart was
Speaker 1: I mean, he was kind of a you know, kind
Speaker 1: of a born storyteller. Some people just tell a good story.
Speaker 1: You kind of want Stuart to be at dinner with
Speaker 1: you because he'll pick up the slack when you need
Speaker 1: a little entertainment, Like he's like a recontour. And so
Speaker 1: we you know we I think we complimented each other
Speaker 1: that way. You know, we were you know we were
Speaker 1: And as then as Thaoli, his writing partner, would say,
Speaker 1: he said, you know, Stuart and I could have made
Speaker 1: any kind of movie you wanted to do. Horror. Of course,
Speaker 1: whatever you start doing that ends up being stuck in it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but that's not exactly true. I mean Stuart already would
Speaker 1: have had the reanimator pilot. Of course it was for
Speaker 1: like all audiences, like you know, right back then, who
Speaker 1: wants to do TV? Nobody? That's true now, you know,
Speaker 1: with the streaming services.
Speaker 2: That's the prestige now.
Speaker 1: Although I must say I think a lot of them.
Speaker 1: There's horror. I mean, horror is just everywhere. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's never been bigger. But in a way it's it's
Speaker 1: for me, it's never been more boring. I just you know,
Speaker 1: I think that well, I forgot to mention this the
Speaker 1: first my first introduction to horror, before I could read,
Speaker 1: the first time I got money to buy a comic book.
Speaker 1: I don't think I was I think I was four
Speaker 1: years old, I got a horror comic. Wow, And those
Speaker 1: horror comics were really kind of disturbing until I had
Speaker 1: got a little older and was introduced to Mad Magazine,
Speaker 1: And then I started understanding satire because all the horror
Speaker 1: comics they were kind of they were grizzly, but the
Speaker 1: guys writing were grown ups and they just they were
Speaker 1: just joking around. I mean, they were so ironic and satirical.
Speaker 1: But of course when I first first time I read
Speaker 1: Mad Magazine, I was shocked they were selling I think
Speaker 1: they at a fake ad. You know. Back then on
Speaker 1: match books they used to try to sell you a
Speaker 1: course in plumbing or electric and they would sell a
Speaker 1: course and bank robbing or you know, right and buzzley,
Speaker 1: you know, and I'd go, how can they do that?
Speaker 1: Oh my god? You know, but you have to learn
Speaker 1: the concept of satire. Yeah, and I think the I
Speaker 1: think the when you especially in the Easy comics, which
Speaker 1: really laid it on thick, you know, I mean that's
Speaker 1: basically Return the Living Dead of Dan O'Bannon is post
Speaker 1: comics in the movies for the first time, not the
Speaker 1: Creek shows stuff where they think you were a batman
Speaker 1: TV series where they think the way you make a
Speaker 1: comic to a movie is by showing frames and going
Speaker 1: into them and having primary colors and putting pals and no, no, no,
Speaker 1: but that whole idea of eating brains. Who eats brains?
Speaker 1: Nobody except in the comic books, because that's funny. It's
Speaker 1: fun grisly. People are always getting revenge on each other.
Speaker 1: I don't know. And to me, the horror was I
Speaker 1: think the horror that I loved was kind of tended
Speaker 1: towards the carnival type of you know, Carnival eye type
Speaker 1: of horror, whereas it's just a fun ride, you know,
Speaker 1: it's just really entertaining. But I loved you know, Rosemary's Baby,
Speaker 1: the Exorcist and the you know, the real kind of
Speaker 1: high end horror. Right.
Speaker 5: Well, you say hor today is boring. What do you
Speaker 5: feel like it's missing? What do you think we've lost
Speaker 5: since Reanimator?
Speaker 1: I don't know, just the fun of it. I think
Speaker 1: people take themselves so seriously. You know, everybody, everybody's a author,
Speaker 1: you know, everybody's the movie, isn't It's not just a movie.
Speaker 1: It's not just the horror movie. It's really about, you know,
Speaker 1: something else it's message forward, you know, everything's made, everything's
Speaker 1: like more than that, it's not or it ends up
Speaker 1: being like The Walking Dead or something where it's basically
Speaker 1: a soap opera with a with EFTs. Well it's I mean,
Speaker 1: obviously it's got a huge audience. I'm not you know,
Speaker 1: I'm not.
Speaker 4: He I wish I made Walking Dead, but you know,
Speaker 4: for my money, I prefer to watch you know, humanoids from.
Speaker 1: The deep, and I'm not. And even stuff like Halloween
Speaker 1: was was ironic. Of course it wasn't. You didn't laugh
Speaker 1: at it, but it was just ironic and it was funny.
Speaker 1: How could this guy he didn't just kill him? And
Speaker 1: he had to put up a tombstone?
Speaker 5: And you know, knowing knowing how you.
Speaker 1: Then there's the Last House on the Left and Bill
Speaker 1: Snape Eyes and those don't give you much room.
Speaker 5: For irony, although Wes Craven classically has a lot of
Speaker 5: humor in his stuff too, So yeah, it's.
Speaker 1: All there's Freddie especially, Yeah.
Speaker 5: Knowing knowing how you feel about the current horror realm,
Speaker 5: are you watching much current stuff?
Speaker 2: Are you just kind of letting it go by?
Speaker 1: No? I don't. I don't watch much. I mostly do
Speaker 1: books these days.
Speaker 2: What have you been reading.
Speaker 1: Right now? Yeah, well, I've been doing a lot of
Speaker 1: Elmore Leonard.
Speaker 2: Oh nice.
Speaker 1: You know, I'm always interested if I see a movie
Speaker 1: I like, I'll get the book.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I mostly do audio books because then you can do stuff.
Speaker 2: Of course.
Speaker 1: I'm always really interested in how a different story is
Speaker 1: done in different media, right, you know, and what choices
Speaker 1: are made. What you know, when I remember that there
Speaker 1: was that movie what's it called Pretty Little Things or something,
Speaker 1: the one with you know, the girl who's when they
Speaker 1: put a baby's or put her baby's brain in her
Speaker 1: body or poor things, Poor things. Yes, well, when I
Speaker 1: saw that, and it has a lot of sort of
Speaker 1: brighter reanimator stuff in it, you know. But I mean
Speaker 1: I didn't care much for the message forward. I mean,
Speaker 1: I think it's amusing that a movie that reports to
Speaker 1: be sort of a message forward feminist female empowerment movie
Speaker 1: basically creates the ultimate pedophiles dream and its main character,
Speaker 1: you know, a young woman with a child's mind who
Speaker 1: just wants to fucking have orgasms. You know, that's female empowerment. Okay,
Speaker 1: But anyway, so I immediately went and got the book
Speaker 1: ye and read and that explained a lot to me
Speaker 1: why it was the way it was. And the book
Speaker 1: is a found footage thing anyway, by the way, But
Speaker 1: when I read the book then I thought, I think
Speaker 1: it came out in ninety one or ninety two, and
Speaker 1: I thought, oh my god, if I had seen this
Speaker 1: back then, Stuart and I could have really had fun
Speaker 1: with this. I mean, I thought we would have jumped
Speaker 1: on it. What a good idea. But mostly I don't
Speaker 1: see a lot and I kind of I'm not one
Speaker 1: of those people that is that enjoys watching a lot
Speaker 1: of series. I don't binge series or anything. So I'm
Speaker 1: I don't know, I'm not I'm not a great movie consumer.
Speaker 1: In my old age younger, I thought everything was fascinating.
Speaker 1: A movie, it's just fascinating, And now every movie is
Speaker 1: kind of boring.
Speaker 5: What's what's the last one that really captured you that
Speaker 5: that you you walked away going damp that was genuinely fascinating.
Speaker 1: Oh no, I can't remember. I can't think of anything.
Speaker 2: That's pretty telling.
Speaker 5: You know, you mentioned the the sort of brighter re
Speaker 5: animator aspects in Poor Things. How How after you know,
Speaker 5: forty years of doing this, do you feel like your
Speaker 5: influence has left a lasting impression, because clearly it has
Speaker 5: with things like Reanimator and you know, the even you know,
Speaker 5: stuff like Return of Living Dead three. You can find
Speaker 5: in so many modern movies that were clearly something that
Speaker 5: played an influence on some of these filmmakers.
Speaker 1: Well, I'm glad. I'm glad that some of the movies
Speaker 1: I worked on are still being watched. Yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: I just saw I just I think three weekends ago.
Speaker 1: It was a screening of Return Livy Dead three and
Speaker 1: Society because I did the Q and A and beforehand
Speaker 1: I was part of a bur less act where I
Speaker 1: got my guts pulled out, my crazy.
Speaker 2: You weren't there, but yeah, Jeremy was there.
Speaker 5: I love that You're still so just, you know, happy
Speaker 5: to be a part of things like that, and a
Speaker 5: lot of people that made, you know, stuff like Brider
Speaker 5: Reanimator by this time would have either I don't know,
Speaker 5: famously calmed down and got a little tepid, but you're
Speaker 5: just like, fuck it, We're just gonna live in the
Speaker 5: genre and make the best of it.
Speaker 2: And that that's so.
Speaker 1: If I was making movies, I might it might be different.
Speaker 1: I don't know. I think there's something to nate, you know,
Speaker 1: so I don't know what I would do now. I
Speaker 1: probably not want to work that hard. I was telling
Speaker 1: me older movie people when I was in the midst
Speaker 1: of everything, that's saying why don't you make why don't
Speaker 1: you direct the movie? And say, God, you got to
Speaker 1: get up.
Speaker 2: So early, yeah, or stay up too late.
Speaker 1: But when you're doing it. Of course, I had kids
Speaker 1: and I had to work hard, but also I just
Speaker 1: just it was just pedal to the metal. Let's go, you.
Speaker 5: Know, speaking to kids in one year, you go, this
Speaker 5: is still so funny to me. You go from Honey
Speaker 5: ice Truck the kids, uh taking part in the creation
Speaker 5: of an iconic children's story, to society fallowing that up
Speaker 5: on your resume. The the shunting is right after this
Speaker 5: really beautiful Disney story.
Speaker 1: Well you've got to remember. You got to remember that
Speaker 1: done fantasy is just the other side.
Speaker 2: Of horror exactly.
Speaker 1: That is, if you take Honey I shrunk the kids
Speaker 1: and make it a little less bright and have a
Speaker 1: bad end playing you know, the the Incredible Shrinking Man
Speaker 1: or or it's the one Doctor cyclop It is it
Speaker 1: Doctor Cyclops, the one where he makes some all real
Speaker 1: little Those movies were when we when Stuart Stewart and
Speaker 1: I just came up with Honey, I shrunk the kids
Speaker 1: because we both have kids, and he said, let's make
Speaker 1: a movie for our kids, and so I and I said, oh,
Speaker 1: when I was a kid, I was playing the grass
Speaker 1: little soldier, just getting down by the tree trunk. Everything
Speaker 1: looks so huge, you know, you know, riding on a
Speaker 1: beetle or and he said, he said, we'll call it
Speaker 1: teeny Weenies. It's about kids that get trunk by their
Speaker 1: dad and thrown out. In the story is they got
Speaker 1: to get home. And he said we should take it
Speaker 1: to Disney. Well, Stewart had a really happening agent and
Speaker 1: we were in Rome and the agent said he got
Speaker 1: a pitch. You got a pitch for us at Disney.
Speaker 1: So we wrote. We wrote the treatment on a yellow
Speaker 1: legal pad on the flight back from Rome, went into Disney,
Speaker 1: and it just rolled from there, you know. Except they
Speaker 1: told us pretty early on when they made the deal
Speaker 1: they said, look at we're going to have to change
Speaker 1: the title teeny Whenies sounds like a low budget porn.
Speaker 1: This was said by Jeffrey Katzenbergen, the executive di An.
Speaker 2: Amazing. I love that.
Speaker 5: So with with things that you you know, you've got
Speaker 5: this partnership with Stuart and you're you're making all these
Speaker 5: relationships and now you're coming in and going into established
Speaker 5: franchises where a first film has been made and adding
Speaker 5: to the cannon. Was there ever a like any pressure
Speaker 5: on you when you're stepping into Reanimator or Return the
Speaker 5: Living Dead or you know, Silent Night, Deadly Night to
Speaker 5: make something incredible for the fans of the first ones.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean it's well, especially re Animator.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: But the thing is to see, I wasn't someone when
Speaker 1: I just after making three movies with Stuart, then I
Speaker 1: and I tried making a movie of Dan O'Bannon and
Speaker 1: then he backed out, and I and I had another
Speaker 1: one set up with Stuart and he backed out, and
Speaker 1: then I thought, well, that's a good excuse for me
Speaker 1: to direct, so I can make the deal and make
Speaker 1: the movie, you know, do it all. And but basically,
Speaker 1: I think anybody who's ever spent a lot of time
Speaker 1: on a movie set at one point goes, I'd like
Speaker 1: to direct. It doesn't see that hard. I mean it's
Speaker 1: it seems like the director gets to just make all
Speaker 1: these little decisions and everybody thinks they're wonderful, and you're
Speaker 1: you know, they seem all very you know, seems sort
Speaker 1: of arbitrary. But I knew that I could never get
Speaker 1: anybody to let me direct, except that I had Bride.
Speaker 1: I had the sequel to my own reality. So I
Speaker 1: had the sequel. And so I found a friend of
Speaker 1: mine was starting up an independent production company, and I said, well, listen,
Speaker 1: I'll I'll let you finance the sequel to re Animator,
Speaker 1: but it has to be a two pick and I
Speaker 1: but I have to direct, produce, be in charge and
Speaker 1: all that. But it has to be a two picture
Speaker 1: deal because I had been told by a French distributor
Speaker 1: once that that usually a first time director makes two
Speaker 1: pictures is in one his first, in his last, and
Speaker 1: so because if you make a first movie, it's likely
Speaker 1: it's not going to be any good. Lord Gordon to
Speaker 1: the contrary, although remember Stewart was the theater director for
Speaker 1: ten years. So I said, look at you can. You
Speaker 1: can finance Reanimator sequel, but it has to be two
Speaker 1: picture deal, and that's the second one. So that way,
Speaker 1: the first movie, if I failed, I know I have
Speaker 1: another chance. You know, I can learn from my mistakes.
Speaker 1: So it was it was basically just a logical idea.
Speaker 1: And then I was looking for a project and a
Speaker 1: guy gave me the script of Society, and I really
Speaker 1: liked the paranoia of it, but it didn't have any
Speaker 1: fantastic element, which is sort of like this blood cult.
Speaker 1: And so I and I had just been working with
Speaker 1: Dan O'Bannon for about a year on a project that
Speaker 1: he was going to direct called The Men, about a
Speaker 1: woman that discovers all men are aliens, a concept that
Speaker 1: in the eighties would have worked today too, you know,
Speaker 1: gender fluid doesn't work for those kinds of movies, and
Speaker 1: so it was what I loved about it. It was
Speaker 1: very pulpy, but it was real paranoia. This woman starts
Speaker 1: realizing there's something going on, that it's under the surface,
Speaker 1: you know, that is really weird. And so that's what
Speaker 1: Society had was this idea that this kid's in Beverly
Speaker 1: Hills and and he's kind of does feel he's going crazy.
Speaker 1: He's going to see a shrink, you know, He's just
Speaker 1: thinks parents are up to something horrible, and they are.
Speaker 1: But so I so that's why I mean Back then,
Speaker 1: I just didn't think a lot. I said, Hell, let's
Speaker 1: do this. And the money was coming from Japan, and
Speaker 1: there's a Japanese effects artist in Hollywood and screaming that
Speaker 1: courage of it saw him and we just started developing ideas.
Speaker 1: And I was at that time trying to think, I'm
Speaker 1: really into a fact and if I was going to
Speaker 1: make a movie, it was going to have effects. And
Speaker 1: at that time, Nightmare on Elm Street, it was every
Speaker 1: new one that came out was just sort of you
Speaker 1: know what the rubber guys could do now with all
Speaker 1: these new kind of new kind of materials and the
Speaker 1: new concepts of making replacement puppets by changing the angles
Speaker 1: to it without digital that was always a problem. And
Speaker 1: when I watched The Werewolf, I just always wanted to
Speaker 1: watch the scene where he's growing the hair in a space,
Speaker 1: even though you could see it kind of shift. You know,
Speaker 1: that's the magic, It's the metamorphosis, I think maybe, and
Speaker 1: I thought, well, what effect haven't they done that I'd
Speaker 1: like to see? And I thought about the skin melting,
Speaker 1: And I think the origin of that might have been
Speaker 1: from seeing a late night the late night movies on
Speaker 1: TV of Doctor X by Michael Curtiz, and in Doctor
Speaker 1: X they have a color sequence where he's got this
Speaker 1: synthetic skin kind of it kind of melts his flesh
Speaker 1: together or something. So I think that maybe had some
Speaker 1: influence somehow, But anyway, I just imagined flesh melding together.
Speaker 1: And then George, when I met Georgie, we just looked
Speaker 1: at all these Dolly paintings. He said, he's the surrealist painter.
Speaker 1: So then we started picking Dolly images to build on,
Speaker 1: and then we'd have meetings at my house here to
Speaker 1: with the writers Rick Fry and Woody Keith. Woody Keith
Speaker 1: is now Sef Daniel, and we just kept we just
Speaker 1: started going in that direction. They weren't, you know, they didn't.
Speaker 1: They totally were good with it. There was no like, no,
Speaker 1: what we this is our images now? There was none
Speaker 1: of that. And I think it was Woody who came
Speaker 1: up with the word shunting for that great ending, right,
Speaker 1: and so you know, so, but that was it was
Speaker 1: only because I had the bride of Reanimator is my leverage,
Speaker 1: and I was working with people who were just starting out,
Speaker 1: and nobody was around to say no. Nobody was like
Speaker 1: saying do this, do that or you know, you know,
Speaker 1: so that made it, you know, that made it possible
Speaker 1: to just follow that idea where it went. People are,
Speaker 1: you know. I think what people don't realize is that
Speaker 1: the Shunting is one of the best guy in a
Speaker 1: suit movies ever, you know. I mean, I know, the
Speaker 1: creature from the Black Black Lagoon, I mean that thing
Speaker 1: was swimming, but that guy was swimming. And I hey,
Speaker 1: I produced Guyver, which has the best you known, you know,
Speaker 1: suit monsters doing martial arts you'll ever see.
Speaker 2: It's incredible.
Speaker 1: Four Cages came out last year.
Speaker 2: More Screaming, Matt George, He's all over the disc.
Speaker 1: And Matt George and Steve Wang And but that Shunting
Speaker 1: is basically twelve guys in a suit. Yeah, that's one
Speaker 1: big rubber suit with twelve people when you see the
Speaker 1: whole thing. So that kind of puts it in a
Speaker 1: different context. Yep, you think about it that way. You
Speaker 1: go home just a minute.
Speaker 5: That Society is such an incredible movie, especially you know,
Speaker 5: we were talking about messages in a movie a minute ago,
Speaker 5: but looking back in a twenty twenty five lens with
Speaker 5: you know, everybody shouting eat the rich and all of
Speaker 5: these stories happening. This was a huge part of this film.
Speaker 5: How do you feel like the theme lives you know,
Speaker 5: forty years later.
Speaker 1: Think I do think it. You know, I was very
Speaker 1: I mean, I was very conscious of the political part
Speaker 1: of it because I went to college during the sixties,
Speaker 1: great protests. Everybody was political. It was a hell of
Speaker 1: a lot of fun because we were all eighteen years old,
Speaker 1: you know, or a lot of people were older, but
Speaker 1: I was eighteen twenty years It was just politics was great.
Speaker 1: You know, turned onto an in drop out and I
Speaker 1: did that, and so the idea and so, and of
Speaker 1: course it was all leftist politics. Back then. It seemed
Speaker 1: like the country was just going to explode, and I was,
Speaker 1: I was. I was a part of the left, but
Speaker 1: I was, I wasn't you know, I wasn't all that radical,
Speaker 1: at least a person in my personal life.
Speaker 2: I was.
Speaker 1: But politically, you know, I had to make at one point,
Speaker 1: I had to make a living, so I always had
Speaker 1: a job, which was very politically incorrect back then, I
Speaker 1: and I kind of could see that you really wouldn't
Speaker 1: want the people on the fringe to run things. Well,
Speaker 1: today it's one hundred and eighty degrees. Now the right
Speaker 1: is making the world seem like it's going to blow up,
Speaker 1: and you don't want those guys to run it, but
Speaker 1: you really don't want the ones on the fore. I
Speaker 1: think you just got to get rid of the far ends.
Speaker 1: I knew that there was fun to be had because
Speaker 1: what I did was to take the script and just followed,
Speaker 1: just extended it to observe me.
Speaker 2: Get it excessive, like you said, so the.
Speaker 1: So that it was about a kid in Beverly Hills,
Speaker 1: rich people, rich people, and the guy who wrote it
Speaker 1: is that kid would he Keith He and he was
Speaker 1: messed up, and he was very suspicious of what was
Speaker 1: going on and was very well aware of that Beverly
Speaker 1: Hill society. His family was very wealthy. And so just
Speaker 1: taking that idea and extending it kind of made me think, well,
Speaker 1: I could make a new monster instead of Dracula, instead
Speaker 1: of the typical you know, typical monsters that we have.
Speaker 1: You know that most movies are based on you know,
Speaker 1: I thought, well, this could be kind of fun to
Speaker 1: do a different monster. But I was very careful not
Speaker 1: to have someone get at a blackboard and give the
Speaker 1: message here, you know, just you know, That's why I
Speaker 1: had the guy say, you know, at the beginning of
Speaker 1: the Shunting, when they get ability to say he says
Speaker 1: aliens scum, he says, We're not aliens. We're not from
Speaker 1: our space or anything. We've been here as long as
Speaker 1: you Because I have a whole I have a whole
Speaker 1: origin story for society. Man. It goes back. It's like
Speaker 1: two thousand and one, it goes back to the caveman
Speaker 1: right to Because I always feel like, especially well maybe
Speaker 1: any movie or any story, but especially genre where it's
Speaker 1: kind of science fictioning. I kind of feel like the
Speaker 1: movie is just the part of the iceberg that you see,
Speaker 1: but it's got to have a huge, a huge basis
Speaker 1: to it. But you don't want to be you don't,
Speaker 1: you know. I mean, I it comes out when he
Speaker 1: says the rich have always sucked up for you know,
Speaker 1: you know, low class shit like you well, I mean
Speaker 1: that's kind of Marxism, you know. But it's also just reality.
Speaker 1: H I mean, it's not. When they released the movie
Speaker 1: in the UK where it was actually successful, I said,
Speaker 1: would you just put on the poster a true story?
Speaker 1: You know, because I think it is a true story.
Speaker 1: It's just metaphorically speaking, but also there's not a real
Speaker 1: I did have. Back in the early seventies, they did
Speaker 1: the front of mine in Berkeley has put out these
Speaker 1: these t shirts that said eat the rich with like
Speaker 1: a plate and fork, and I and my love in
Speaker 1: the movie actually wears it to the party. But then
Speaker 1: he ended up having a jacket on. You couldn't see
Speaker 1: it ruined. It didn't matter. I wasn't trying, you know,
Speaker 1: it wasn't I just felt like it it that's not
Speaker 1: really the point of it. It's just the monster and
Speaker 1: what I And then because at the same time, so
Speaker 1: I just took what was already in the story and
Speaker 1: just expand, you know, kind of developed it more and
Speaker 1: with and with and then there was the kind of
Speaker 1: incest that was in there, the sister and the brother.
Speaker 1: And then at that time, I think I'd been reading
Speaker 1: this David Skull book about monster movies, The Monster Show
Speaker 1: or something, and at one point he was saying, you know,
Speaker 1: horror movies are about taboo. They're about taboos, you know,
Speaker 1: whether it's cannibalism or violence or whatever, and that and
Speaker 1: one of the ones, one of the earliest taboos that's
Speaker 1: still really serious is incests. And so then I thought, well,
Speaker 1: that's all that's already a part of the movie. Let's
Speaker 1: bring it. Let's let's just get it, expand on it,
Speaker 1: make it stronger. And and that is real creepy, you know,
Speaker 1: the whole thing with the sister and then with the parents,
Speaker 1: and it's real. It's it's real creepy. It kind of
Speaker 1: throws you, you know, something's wrong here, you know, you
Speaker 1: don't quite you know, you know, why really understand why
Speaker 1: we got such a such an aversion to it. But
Speaker 1: so anyway, that was how it started to It was
Speaker 1: sort of developing those kind of narrative ideas. But then
Speaker 1: in concert with George, who's coming up with different variations
Speaker 1: of the flesh melding, and then and then Woody and Rick,
Speaker 1: they I mean, they just had the weirdest kind of imagination.
Speaker 1: So it's really just sort of a few witches around
Speaker 1: the bubbling pot. But it was very disappointing for me
Speaker 1: because I thought, what we made that movie. Of course,
Speaker 1: I'm saying I always think the movie, especially when I
Speaker 1: started out, I thought, this movie is gonna Back then
Speaker 1: in Variety they would put the box office, you know,
Speaker 1: and they list the box Office like Box Office Mojo,
Speaker 1: and and I thought it's going to be number one.
Speaker 1: I didn't realize that that my taste is not shared
Speaker 1: by a lot of people. And so if you're Spielberg,
Speaker 1: what what he likes? We all love. I love most
Speaker 1: of his movies. His taste. Really, you know, I respond,
Speaker 1: and so does almost everybody, But my taste or Stewart's
Speaker 1: Dayse or George's, it's getting into a much more limited
Speaker 1: number of people. And when you know, Society and Bride
Speaker 1: kind of came out at the same time, as they
Speaker 1: were both made under the same deal. So the minute
Speaker 1: I was in post on Society, I was getting ready
Speaker 1: to shoot Bride. Nice and I remember that Bride and
Speaker 1: even my friends kind of didn't like it, you know,
Speaker 1: I mean, I'm not saying it's a great movie. I
Speaker 1: was pretty clumsy directing and all that, but it wasn't.
Speaker 1: But I thought that, well, I mean, it delivers, hang
Speaker 1: in there, it delivers. But then, you know, my friends
Speaker 1: did kind of like Brider reanimators a little more traditional movie.
Speaker 1: But then in the UK, where the UK just released
Speaker 1: first in the.
Speaker 6: UK because the company that bought the UK company liked it,
Speaker 6: so they bought the North American right, so that's why
Speaker 6: it was released later and ended up being out here
Speaker 6: later than.
Speaker 1: It was in Europe. But they released it like a
Speaker 1: regular movie and it got great. They got good reviews.
Speaker 1: They even brought Billy Warlock over and you know, it's
Speaker 1: this whole thing. Of course, back then, this is pre internet,
Speaker 1: so they'd send me a fax or something, Hey blah
Speaker 1: blah blah, and I go, is this real? I don't know,
Speaker 1: I'm not there, you know, And it did, you know.
Speaker 1: So it it did well in UK and France and Spain, Italy,
Speaker 1: but then here it was like nothing and so only
Speaker 1: but then Bride over there, at least in the UK
Speaker 1: wasn't seen as any great deal. I think it was
Speaker 1: more accepted here. But the thing that was really gratifying
Speaker 1: was about twenty years later, in the late two thousands,
Speaker 1: all of a sudden there was this other generation that
Speaker 1: came up in the great procession, and plus they started
Speaker 1: liking the eighties. Oh yeah, I think what they liked
Speaker 1: was what it's kind of like when I would watch
Speaker 1: Japanese jagor nice, the Ring and the Grudge and all that, which,
Speaker 1: by the way, the guy that I made an ecronomicon
Speaker 1: and crime freeman from the Japanese producer actually created Jar,
Speaker 1: he produced the Ring, the Grudge. He showed me the
Speaker 1: script of the Ring before he made it. He and
Speaker 1: he and he was, you know, the Japanese producer on
Speaker 1: the American remakes. Very successful Japanese producer. And but I'd
Speaker 1: tell my friend, I watch, like, you know, The Ring
Speaker 1: or something of the Grudge, and you know, usually there
Speaker 1: was a girl with hair in front of her eyes,
Speaker 1: crawling down a hall or out of a TV or somewhere,
Speaker 1: and and and you'd see the setup for it. And
Speaker 1: I would sometimes I'd go, well, that seems kind of ill, lot,
Speaker 1: that seems kind of stupid. Why would this person do that?
Speaker 1: And they'd go Japanese culture. And I think that's what
Speaker 1: happened with society, is that the part of it that
Speaker 1: was bad when it was in its era, they'd go,
Speaker 1: there's a little dicey there. But in another generation they're looking,
Speaker 1: they'd go, isn't that stupid? That's say it's the eighties.
Speaker 7: You get absolved, you get you get it's like, oh okay,
Speaker 7: it's just the eighties.
Speaker 1: And now they like all the rubber effects. And I
Speaker 1: think there's something attractive now, there's something more handmade about
Speaker 1: the eighties because you had all these it was mostly
Speaker 1: I mean, there were just a lot of amateur filmmakers
Speaker 1: making movies with companies that were just started up by
Speaker 1: people who It wasn't that you know, there was no
Speaker 1: curating by the business. And I think there's there's something
Speaker 1: clumsy about the storytelling. I mean, you know, I mean,
Speaker 1: you know, let's you watch the Thing, Carpter's the Thing
Speaker 1: and Kurt Russell has a cowboy hat out in sub zero.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, because that's cool, you know, the eight Why
Speaker 1: but the affects great that I'm not groundbreaking stuff.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 5: You know, we've talked about so many of your collaborations.
Speaker 5: There's so many throughout your story that are solid, you know,
Speaker 5: screaming at George Stewart. One of the big ones that
Speaker 5: we haven't really mentioned yet is John Penny worked on
Speaker 5: some films and then the big thing I always am
Speaker 5: on here talking about physical media and you guys just
Speaker 5: just over a year ago now came out and announced
Speaker 5: Dark Arts. Can you share what that is and what
Speaker 5: is going on with it?
Speaker 1: You know what it is John Penny. I met him
Speaker 1: when when I was trying to find a writer for
Speaker 1: Return to Living Dead three, yeah, which it was a
Speaker 1: whole you know, that Return Living Dead just fantastic movie,
Speaker 1: and the second one they kind of it underperformed and
Speaker 1: so the value went way down, which got it down
Speaker 1: to my level. And I was working with I was
Speaker 1: working with this company called Trimark, and at that time
Speaker 1: I was working on Warlock two, you know, so we
Speaker 1: were I was working on the story, you know, developing
Speaker 1: the story. I was going to direct it. And then
Speaker 1: they got the rights to Return Living Dead three and
Speaker 1: asked if I'd want to do that. I said, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: because I've never been against doing sequels because I remember
Speaker 1: when we were Stuart and I were talking about Bride
Speaker 1: of Reanimator and Stuart had big time representation. I've never
Speaker 1: had an agent, so that's how that I am. And
Speaker 1: and he said, my agent said, I don't do sequels
Speaker 1: because when you start out, you don't know where you're going, right,
Speaker 1: you know. I mean back then, the only sequels were
Speaker 1: like The Godfather, you know. It wasn't like now where
Speaker 1: every sequels can be a big thing. And I said, okay,
Speaker 1: but I guess I never really expected that I would
Speaker 1: be able to make big movies as a director. And
Speaker 1: I just thought, boy, if somebody just me a chance
Speaker 1: to direct a movie, I'm good. And if it's sequels
Speaker 1: that I like, I don't know, I'm happy to do it.
Speaker 2: There's a built in audience too.
Speaker 1: So then I got a chance to do that and
Speaker 1: they and then they said the only thing that it
Speaker 1: needed to have didn't have to have the characters, the actors,
Speaker 1: none of that stuff. It just had to have the
Speaker 1: gag and the braining. And for some reason, I mean
Speaker 1: usually I get real into the irony and all the funny,
Speaker 1: you know, And for some reason, I just wanted to
Speaker 1: have the main character be living dead to change the
Speaker 1: dynamic because I thought, at nineteen ninety two, there's just
Speaker 1: been too many zombie movies. What do you get to do?
Speaker 1: And so I had always thought that the ride of
Speaker 1: Reanimator was the best character in that movie, but I
Speaker 1: didn't have confidence in her. I brought her in at
Speaker 1: the end like the Bride of Frankenstein, and she shows
Speaker 1: up in the movies ending, and I thought she needs
Speaker 1: her own movie kind of, And so so that was
Speaker 1: sort of the one thing I wanted to do, and
Speaker 1: then I got pitched by many many writers, and John
Speaker 1: Penny came in and he had the story of the
Speaker 1: military weapon zombies and the freezing with the bullet and
Speaker 1: the other colonel who thought they should do it a
Speaker 1: different way, and and and so, and it was a
Speaker 1: Romeo and Juliet. It was the kids on the run, right,
Speaker 1: and the girl was dead and so wow, that was
Speaker 1: it for me. And so we immediately started started developing
Speaker 1: it and working on it. And he's been we've been
Speaker 1: good friends ever since. We you know, we work on
Speaker 1: a lot of stuff. And then about you know, a
Speaker 1: few years ago, you know, everybody's making movies and they
Speaker 1: make these no budget movies they call the micro budget
Speaker 1: and I can't be in that business. Nobody's going to
Speaker 1: work for me for free, right, But I said, hey,
Speaker 1: we could sell them because I was a partner in
Speaker 1: a sales company in the two thousands, I think I
Speaker 1: think I started in about two thousand and seven or something.
Speaker 1: So I wanted to get into sales. And because you
Speaker 1: just it's really hard to make a movie and then
Speaker 1: not be able to touch it, and so you kind
Speaker 1: of you know, and actually selling movies is how you
Speaker 1: get movies. Finance. That's how you get the money is
Speaker 1: by selling, and so I kind of got into that
Speaker 1: and then we started out at first with Dark Arts.
Speaker 1: We just at first we just started out being producers reps.
Speaker 1: I said, you know, there's all these people making independent movies,
Speaker 1: but they don't they don't know how to make a deal.
Speaker 1: And I lived it because when I made Reanimator, fortunately
Speaker 1: got a company to sell it and distribute it. We
Speaker 1: just kept all the money and I had to assume
Speaker 1: them and it was terrible. And because I didn't know,
Speaker 1: you know, read the content. You don't know what the
Speaker 1: what the business.
Speaker 2: Is, plus no representation, like you said.
Speaker 1: So then what we would do at first, we would
Speaker 1: just say, look at somebody has a movie and say
Speaker 1: we can we'll we'll set you up with a foreign
Speaker 1: sales deal. Yeah, and so we'll find someone to sell
Speaker 1: it for you, and we'll help you. We'll make the
Speaker 1: contract for you and make it a contract that's going
Speaker 1: to be good for you. And then we get a
Speaker 1: like a commission, like a like an agent or something.
Speaker 1: And so we started doing it that way, and then
Speaker 1: that kind of turns into doing North America domestic because
Speaker 1: a lot of those those those sales companies also do
Speaker 1: domestic so then we start getting into that. And so
Speaker 1: then we just started thinking, well, you know, we might
Speaker 1: as well just get into this because we can. If
Speaker 1: you know, when people would show me a movie that
Speaker 1: they made and I'd say, well, i's hey, let me
Speaker 1: sell it, you know, if it's a horror or something,
Speaker 1: and and then I'd say, you know, but next time,
Speaker 1: would you just send the script ahead? Would you just
Speaker 1: talk to us? It's not about spending more money. But
Speaker 1: because most of most of these s folks, most of them,
Speaker 1: i'd say, are not in LA, right, So if you're
Speaker 1: in LA, you're in the midst of everything. You know,
Speaker 1: you still need help. But if you're you know, you know,
Speaker 1: out of LA, you can make the movie and be
Speaker 1: very enthusiastic, but you don't necessarily know men, anybody in
Speaker 1: the business. And if you're here and you try making
Speaker 1: a movie just your friends and everybody, you know, it's
Speaker 1: going to let you know when you're off. Everybody's savvy.
Speaker 1: You know, there's a film I queue you know in
Speaker 1: LA that it's just almost in the air or something.
Speaker 1: People know everybody's doing something. But if we're in you know,
Speaker 1: Phoenix or Cleveland or you know, you don't know, there's
Speaker 1: nobody around to tell you that that's not a good idea.
Speaker 1: So anyway, we got into it so that we could
Speaker 1: get in on the micro budget stuff, you know, and
Speaker 1: and it's it's a it's it's a lot of work,
Speaker 1: but luckily John does most of it. We're always looking
Speaker 1: for movies. So if you've got a horror movie and
Speaker 1: you need someone to distribute it, email us.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Dark Arts Entertainment.
Speaker 5: Dark Arts announced that they were partnering with the m
Speaker 5: v D H to be putting out is that for.
Speaker 1: The Yeah, we do the retail through m v D.
Speaker 1: You know, there's three, there's physical and if you're direct
Speaker 1: to consumer, is a very very big deal to set up. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So most most companies you know that aren't big enough
Speaker 1: to do that go through m v D. M v
Speaker 1: D has different tiers of deals, so you get the
Speaker 1: one that works for you and they get they get
Speaker 1: them out there. But that's that's basically considered retail when
Speaker 1: it's on Amazon and all that, and then to do streaming,
Speaker 1: m v D can do that, but there's a lot
Speaker 1: of different companies that that you can deal with for
Speaker 1: streaming and so it's you know, it's it depends on
Speaker 1: the movie with the best way to go and the
Speaker 1: main thing is is not to lose money.
Speaker 5: Right Well, on that note, I'm obviously here on you know,
Speaker 5: physical media side of things, and we probably should finish
Speaker 5: this up with some really cool things. I mean, Ignite
Speaker 5: Films has been making some waves this year with a giant,
Speaker 5: just beautiful release of Reanimator, which obviously you had a
Speaker 5: big part in, and then they announced shortly after that
Speaker 5: was shipping that Bride is getting a similar sort of
Speaker 5: gigantic release from them.
Speaker 1: That is so I don't think Bride would. Re Animator
Speaker 1: deserves a big fur thing. And they did a great job. Actually,
Speaker 1: Eagle Rock and Ignite for the companies, and Eagle Rock
Speaker 1: is is the company that actually took on the job
Speaker 1: of restoration and and you know produced it, and I
Speaker 1: think they also do delivery. Ignite is a depart is
Speaker 1: a distributor. They did well, they did without Ego Rock.
Speaker 1: They did Invaders from Mars, the original one. They did
Speaker 1: a nice job of restoration. So so it's a but
Speaker 1: actually those companies and Unearthed, the company that distributed diver
Speaker 1: are all there's one partner in common with all of them,
Speaker 1: who's also the guy who financed Society and bright up
Speaker 1: the reanimated with Wild Street Pictures back.
Speaker 2: He's got his hand and everything. Wow, Well, he's just one.
Speaker 1: He's one of the few, one of the few guys
Speaker 1: in the movie business that doesn't really want to be
Speaker 1: on the set or get behind the camera or any
Speaker 1: of it. You know. But in any case, Yeah, the
Speaker 1: I think following up Reanimator with Bride this fall will
Speaker 1: be a well, give, it'll get Bride more attention. See,
Speaker 1: I don't think I don't think Bride would would get
Speaker 1: that much attention, you know if you waited a few years, right,
Speaker 1: you know, I get that. But to go right into it,
Speaker 1: I think there'll be a lot of excitement.
Speaker 5: I think the the logical question for many people that
Speaker 5: love your work and love these films and physical media specifically,
Speaker 5: is is that possibly going to be followed up with
Speaker 5: Society shortly after that?
Speaker 1: Well? What I'd like to do before I would like
Speaker 1: to I wish I owned Beyond Reanimator because I think
Speaker 1: that would you know, it's it's got, it's it's got
Speaker 1: to his charms. But it'd be great. I always wanted
Speaker 1: to have a three pack. I've never that's the problem
Speaker 1: when you made, you know, these movies get scattered around.
Speaker 1: I know. I did a couple of The Silent Night
Speaker 1: Deadly Nights, and I was kind of thrilled when Lionsgate
Speaker 1: came or they called it Best Front, and he came
Speaker 1: out with the pack you get all those crappy movies together.
Speaker 1: But they put up in that pack. Corbin and I
Speaker 1: tried to make a third one. I could just never
Speaker 1: get them to give us the rights. He loves that part.
Speaker 1: But anyway, I think that I like that. I like
Speaker 1: getting all the packs together. I wish, you know, I wish,
Speaker 1: I wish I owned Dagon. I think that would be
Speaker 1: a treatment that fits in an Necronomicon. It's just really
Speaker 1: sad that I can't get a hold of that because
Speaker 1: that would be just never is never seen. And I
Speaker 1: think it's I'm not saying it's great, but man, it's
Speaker 1: got some cool stuff. I mean, Jeffrey Combs is playing
Speaker 1: HP Lovecraft and he's made up to look like him
Speaker 1: and sort of an action hero. I like. I like
Speaker 1: an Acronomicon a lot. I think I think it would
Speaker 1: do good, you know.
Speaker 2: It's understand, pardon it's under scene.
Speaker 5: I feel like a lot of people would truly love
Speaker 5: it if just given the opportunity to see it.
Speaker 1: Where do you see it? I think the only way
Speaker 1: to see it is I think you can find it
Speaker 1: on YouTube.
Speaker 5: I have an import. It was released over I think
Speaker 5: in Chermany or something like that, so I had to
Speaker 5: have it.
Speaker 1: But I mean, the thing is is it's not on streaming.
Speaker 1: It's right, it's it's owned by the cop one of
Speaker 1: the production companies. It was financed by one half by
Speaker 1: a Japanese company and the other by the by French company,
Speaker 1: and the French company licensed it North America to New
Speaker 1: Line and the New Line didn't do anything with it.
Speaker 1: And then it just sad because they made these back then,
Speaker 1: they'd make these deals for twenty years, twenty place. So
Speaker 1: they it just goes into a library. These are companies
Speaker 1: that aren't focused on joining their library. They're focused on
Speaker 1: making hunger loans, you know, And the library is basically
Speaker 1: real estate. It's collateral for bank loads, so they're not
Speaker 1: they don't have an interest. It's not worth their while
Speaker 1: to even sometimes license it out for someone else to
Speaker 1: put it out because they got to get their lawyers
Speaker 1: to deal. You know. It's so it's really it's sad.
Speaker 1: And the French company, I don't know, they don't have
Speaker 1: any interest in I tried to just get the Spanish
Speaker 1: rights when I was living in school.
Speaker 5: I really just want to say thank you for all
Speaker 5: the time. I mean, we've been here almost ninety minutes
Speaker 5: and you've been incredible and some of the best stories.
Speaker 5: I mean, you are an idol for so many people
Speaker 5: that love physical media nowadays and films that you know,
Speaker 5: people were raised on Society and Brighter Reanimator and it.
Speaker 2: Means so much.
Speaker 5: And you know, showing my kids Honeyce Trunk the kids
Speaker 5: was one of my defining moments and they loved it too.
Speaker 1: Well. You know, people, I'm starting to think I might
Speaker 1: start collecting Blu rates and DVDs again, because you know,
Speaker 1: I'm constantly paying money on VOD for movies I've seen
Speaker 1: one hundred times and they never lower the price exactly,
Speaker 1: you know, and then if you think you can buy
Speaker 1: it on VOD, then that company goes out of business.
Speaker 1: Still kid yourself, or they lose a license. Yeah, you know,
Speaker 1: and so my friends that usually the people I know
Speaker 1: that collect Blu rays and DVDs. They have huge screens,
Speaker 1: you know, they have huge projection and which I have projection.
Speaker 1: It's the cheapest, best way to watch movies. Don't carry
Speaker 1: those big heavy things around, you know. But he you know,
Speaker 1: I want to see a movie, I've got to go
Speaker 1: pay five dollars for it. And I'm going I used
Speaker 1: to own this movie on VHS for great sakes, you know,
Speaker 1: it's not like it's I was telling my wife just
Speaker 1: the other day because my grandson was over and we're
Speaker 1: watching a couple of old movies and we had to
Speaker 1: buy and I said, you know, I should just start
Speaker 1: getting the blue rays. I should just because if you get,
Speaker 1: if you look around, you get, you get them on sale.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, it won't cost you much more than ready
Speaker 1: them and then ver and you got it right there.
Speaker 1: It just of course you've got to be a librarian.
Speaker 1: You got to figure out a Dowey decimal system or
Speaker 1: something that's true.
Speaker 5: So speaking of that, like I like I was asking,
Speaker 5: do you think society is going to make its way
Speaker 5: from Eagle Rock and Ignite eventually?
Speaker 1: I think so? Yeah, Okay, I.
Speaker 5: That that one scene is enough to I mean it's
Speaker 5: it's like film school in just a couple of minutes
Speaker 5: on screen to be able to show what you can
Speaker 5: do with I mean, like you said, twelve minutes in
Speaker 5: a suit that can change somebody's life, and it impacted
Speaker 5: so many people.
Speaker 2: It's amazing.
Speaker 1: Definitely, it definitely definitely pays off. It's that sucker punch
Speaker 1: of the movie. Yeah, you just have to hang in there.
Speaker 5: I agree, and it's one of those stories that pays off.
Speaker 5: I mean, you ask anybody if they're watching that movie,
Speaker 5: posse it forty five minutes to do it.
Speaker 2: Tell me how this movie ends. If you've never seen
Speaker 2: nobody's ever guess that.
Speaker 3: I'm as so nice to talk with you. I have
Speaker 3: been a media studies professor at the University of North Carolina,
Speaker 3: Greensboro for about twenty years now, and I teach several
Speaker 3: of your movies, and.
Speaker 1: Not much do.
Speaker 3: I do get a stipend to get to get these
Speaker 3: get a little bit, but I teach society a lot,
Speaker 3: and the students really get into, as you were saying,
Speaker 3: the generations. They get into the esthetic, and they also
Speaker 3: get into the themes. And when the pandemic ended and
Speaker 3: we were first stable to go back out into into society.
Speaker 3: I went to a bar with a friend of mine
Speaker 3: and this this young man uh ran up to me saying,
Speaker 3: doctor Dodson, Doctor Dodson, and I he he he. I
Speaker 3: realized he was a student that I had had six
Speaker 3: or seven years before. And he started to take his
Speaker 3: shirt off, and he got the he got the shirt off,
Speaker 3: and he turned around and he showed me this, and
Speaker 3: I just I just wanted you to know that you
Speaker 3: have truly left a mark.
Speaker 2: On on society.
Speaker 1: Yeah, hilarious. Tell him, Tell him good luck, you'll need it.
Speaker 5: Thank you for listening to the Disconnected podcast. There's one
Speaker 5: big thing that you could do to help the show,
Speaker 5: and that is to leave a rating and review you
Speaker 5: on the podcast service of your choice.
Speaker 2: Thank you.
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