The How NOT To Make A Movie Podcast (The How NOT To Make A Movie Podcast)

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The “How NOT To Make A Movie Podcast” tells the story of Hollywood sausage making but from the sausage’s POV. It’s a story of outsized egos, misused power, wasted money and utter foolishness. Of bad behavior and even worse behavior. Of grown ups acting like inmates running the asylum. Of bullshit winning the day. It’s about dedicated film-makers and the larger-than-life impresarios they work for. It’s about what happens when craftspeople see their craft turn into crap.

“TALES FROM THE CRYPT”

“Tales From The Crypt” was one of the HBO’s early hits. It put some of Hollywood’s biggest movie producers on TV via a TV series. Back in the 1990’s the feature world was the feature world and the TV world was the TV world. But Crypt brought the two worlds together to make an anthology based on the classic 1950’s horror comics published by EC Comics. The show had no standing sets or characters. Every episode was its own little feature film – with feature film stars.

Alan Katz and Gil Adler joined the Crypt team after its second season. Crypt’s third season was supposed to be its last. But, Alan and Gil reinvigorated not only the Crypt franchise, they reinvigorated the Crypt Keeper, too. Before their first season as Crypt’s producers was over, HBO ordered more seasons of “Tales From The Crypt” sausage.

More success followed. Universal Studios ordered three Crypt branded feature films (more sausage still!). The Crypt team’s first feature produced the successful “Demon Knight” starring Billy Zane, Jada Pinkett-Smith and William Sadler. As the team prepared to make the second mandated Crypt feature, circumstances beyond their control suddenly conspired against them.

“DEAD EASY” PLEASURE BECOMES “BORDELLO OF BLOOD” PAIN

The team spent six months working on a psychological thriller script called “Dead Easy”. With Universal’s approval, they spent months in New Orleans finding locations and setting up shop.

But, three weeks before starting formal prep (the production schedule was tied to a Halloween release date a year away), Universal canceled “Dead Easy”. Instead, they handed the film makers a whole other script called “Bordello Of Blood” – with the very same production schedule. That meant they had three weeks to revise and then start shooting a script none of them had ever seen before.

What happened next – the production of “Tales From The Crypt Presents Bordello Of Blood” – would make a train wreck look tidy. It’s what happens when sausage-making replaces movie-making. From the casting of its stars to the choice of shooting in Vancouver, every decision the creative team made backfired on them horribly. When you do things for all the wrong reasons, nothing good happens. You end up making a horror movie where the making of the movie is more horrifying than anything in the movie.

But, ultimately, “The How NOT To Make A Movie Podcast” is really about a creative relationship – how it started, how “Bordello of Blood” ended it – and how a podcast –...

In movies and theater and TV shows – in anything that hires actors – casting is the most important creative decision the director will make. Even where a director puts the camera will make no difference if the actors working the other side of the camera are wrong for their roles. Casting can be so tricky that even if you get all the actors but one cast correctly? The one bad actor will ruin the entire story. They’ll be the only actor anyone ever thinks about.

Right For The Role

From a director’s point of view, sometimes casting is “fate and destiny more than a director’s skill and talent.” Steven Spielberg said that and he’s shockingly right. In theory, casting is ninety percent of any director’s work. Sure, sure – in movies and TV shows, the director has to worry about where to put the camera, too, but even perfect camera placement will mean nothing if the actors the camera is photographing are wrong for their roles.

Sometimes, in movies, casting is fate. Ronald Reagan was Warner Bros original choice to play Rick, the hero of Casablanca. Humphrey Bogart was an afterthought.

How does one know when an actor is right for a role? Can one tell if an actor is wrong? Sometimes those choices are hard to discern. Sometimes they’re as clear as a heart attack.

“Bordello Of Blood”

As we geared up to make Bordello of Blood, we had three solid actors in mind for our leads. We never made an offer to a one of them because Joel Silver, our larger-than-life executive producer, had ideas of his own for the leads. And reasons of his own for having those ideas.

In a horror movie, the lead’s important but the villain is more important than anything. “Tales'” first feature, “Demon Knight” had an excellent villain in Billy Zane. Billy’s bad guy is funny, terrifying and relentless – perfect for a “Tales From The Crypt” movie. In “Dead Easy”, we would have had a complex villain caught between two worlds – this one and the afterlife – with the villain so desperate to get back to this world, he doesn’t care that it would cost the soul of his son. “Bordello’s” villain – Lilith – had no particular end game in mind. That came around to bite us in the end – like a vampire prostitute.

This episode also could be called “Location, Location, Location!” Where you shoot your movie makes a huge difference. One surefire way to turn craftsmanship into crap is to shoot somewhere you have no organic reason to be. For “Bordello of Blood”, that location was Vancouver.

Like the script for “Dead Easy”, “Bordello of Blood” took place in the South. But, whereas “Dead Easy” mostly took place in and around New Orleans (incredibly atmospheric), “Bordello” took place in a South that was completely generic. Actually, the entire rationale for even thinking it takes place in the South is the word “Bordello” in the title.

There’s nothing in the script that says the titular bordello has to be in Sarasota or Savannah. I suspect we made it the South out of deference to “Dead Easy”, a project we were all still mourning. Our decision to keep the movie in a Southern location while deciding to shoot up north wasn’t based on anything. I guess we figured that doing something for a poor reason beat doing something for no reason.

Vancouver is a fantastic place to make movies, TV shows, content, music – whatever! Between Gil and I, we’ve worked a ton in Vancouver. But, there are reasons to take a project to a location like Vancouver and reasons to not do that. This episode of “The How NOT To Make A Movie Podcast: The Making Of Bordello Of Blood”, starts with the unit’s arrival in “Rain City” – a location we should never have visited.

If We’re Shooting, It Must Be Thursday

At “Tales From The Crypt“, filming always began on a Thursday. Bordello also began shooting on a Thursday. We’ll explain why. But, before we started shooting, we still have casting issues.

Some are courtesy of our executive Producer Joel Silver. His three choices were all producing unexpected ripple effects. Our star, Dennis Miller won’t speak any of the lines written for him (and we can’t blame him).

Our female lead, Erika Eleniak, doesn’t want to play “those kinds” of roles anymore (after having accepted a part in a movie called “Bordello of Blood”).

And Angie Everhart, the super model/actress playing our villain (who got the role because she was engaged to Sylvester Stallone who’s shooting a movie just to the south in Seattle – with the same executive producer), doesn’t know what everyone else on our set knows: her fiancee – Stallone – is cheating on her on his movie set in Seattle.

Can We Go Home Now?

Meanwhile, our production team can’t find any of the southern US locations called for in the script in Vancouver, the northern Canadian city where we chose to make the movie. Our gung-ho but inexperienced (local) special effects team suddenly makes us nervous; they ask us how to make fake...

In a horror movie, makeup special effects are everything. Get them wrong and your audience will hate you. It’s just how the horror business is: no guts, no glory.

If Freddy Krueger had looked like 1953’s “Robot Monster” (with a gorilla body and a deep sea diver helmet head – with antennas), the whole “Nightmare On Elm Street” series would have flopped. Freddy’s backstory is interesting and the “dream logic rules” are truly terrifying, but if Freddy looks dopey rather than terrifying? Nothing else will matter. The audience will hate him (in the wrong way) and hate the movie in every other way.

Nothing is more important to a horror movie than its makeup special effects.

When Special Makeup Effects Aren’t “Special” Enough

We live and die (ironically) by the quality, the craftsmanship, the authenticity and the sheer OMG-ness of how well we create the illusion of gore. Some of my fondest memories from “Tales From The Crypt” involve me, “Tales'” make up guru Todd Masters and a stack of pathology textbooks. Oh, how we would cackle, the two of us, as we leafed through those pathology textbooks, looking for examples of extreme physical mayhem to put on screen. Unfortunately, agreeing to pay Dennis Miller a million bucks (half a million more than was in our budget for the lead) forced us to leave Todd back in Los Angeles.

In place of Todd, we took a leap of faith and entrusted our horror movie’s makeup special effects – our bread and butter – to an untried local team up in Vancouver.

That’s where this episode begins: we’ve realized that our local makeup special effects team – talented and willing as they are – needs help.

We call in Todd Masters. But there’s only so much he can do with a bus that’s already careening toward a cliff. Meanwhile, Dennis wants to be anywhere but the set. Erika doesn’t want to play the role she’s playing. And Sly finally cuts it off with Angie – leaving her an emotional wreck.

And then Joel comes for another visit!

We had turned into one of those horror movies. the kind where there’s way more horror in making the movie than ever makes it onto the screen.

As the production of “Bordello Of Blood” stumbled toward its climax, we knew we’d leave Vancouver with an unfinished movie in hand. That was ironic because our unfinished movie had finished one relationship (between Sly Stallone and Angie Everhart) and was on its way to finishing another – the decade-long creative one between Alan Katz and Gil Adler. Endings are never pretty.

In this episode, things don’t so much go from bad to worse as settle into a soul-sucking certainty that the project is doomed.

On the bright side (if there was one), at least we weren’t keeping a secret from Angie any more. We had all grown fond of Angie and sympathetic to her after Sly Stallone unceremoniously dumped her in the middle of a working day. Talk about unhappy endings!

Can This Please, Please Be Over?

Tensions between cast members was high. Corey Feldman felt disrespected by Dennis Miller. So did Erika Eleniak and all of the day players – all Canadian. There was even more tension between Dennis and our Canadian crew. The crew had soured on Dennis almost as soon as he’d arrived in Vancouver. First, because he was rude. Second, because he was rude to them for being Canadian. That was weird because Dennis was married to a Canadian from Vancouver! What really annoyed the crew though was having to switch their weekends in order to accommodate Dennis and his HBO TV show’s shooting schedule.

There’s actual fisticuffs between the cast. The crew begins to desert us in droves. And, so we realize too late to do anything about it, there’s not nearly enough night time to make our shooting days. Night time in at the height of summer this far north lasts about four hours.

You’d think a bunch of savvy filmmakers would have considered that. Oh, how wrong you’d be.

Ultimately, Bordello would leave Vancouver uncompleted. And the Crypt creative team was more broken than we realized. Indeed – endings are never pretty.

But, boy, can they make for a great story! And, this being a Hollywood story, there are even a few twists and turns along the way – and an actual “Hollywood ending”.

The Cutting Room Floor is legendary in Hollywood. Whole careers have happened there. In fact, there’s a whole weird history in Hollywood of scenes and actors who famously never made “the cut”. Kevin Costner, for instance, was entirely cut out of “The Big Chill“. He plays Alex – the guy who’s funeral all the other characters are attending. In that vein, this episode is about scenes rescued from the cutting room floor

Video and DVD’s changed everything. One could rent or buy the studio’s cut or “The Director’s Cut”. Finally, the director could put out the extended movie they envisioned with all the scenes the studio cut out. Often that was great. Sometimes though you saw the studio’s wisdom.

Film v Video

Back then, we shot on film, cut on digital then transferred back to film for the release. Digital editing began in 1985 when Quantel produced its limited “Harry” compositor. Things got rolling two years later (1987) when Avid released its Avid/1 Media Composer. Cutting on video was revolutionary of course. You could see dissolves and freeze frames in real time. Before, you’d see dissolves laid out in yellow grease paint drawn across the literal film.

Filming the movie gets all the attention. But, it won’t be until we deliver all the filmed footage to the editing suite – and the editor performs their magic – that it will become “a movie”. Or a TV show.

And it can blow your mind what exactly can happen in an editing suite. There’s a story in this episode about executive producer Bob Zemeckis cobbling together a scene we never shot. He took scraps from the cutting room floor to imply a lesbian sexual encounter between Angie’s character and Erika’s. One pickup shot was all it took to marry it all together in the audience’s head.

That simple cross (filmed using two extras instead of the actors) ties it together perfectly. It really is like seeing how magic tricks work. And at the hands of a magician – our boss Bob Zemeckis.

Ain’t Podcasting Grand!

To be absolutely honest, I hadn’t planned to include an episode like this when I laid out the podcast initially. I knew as I interviewed Gil Adler and Ed Tapia and Greg Melton and Victoria Burrows and Todd Masters and Colleen Nystedt (and Randall Thropp – Randall is a podcast unto himself he’s got so many stories!) that they were giving me way more incredible content than I could possibly use. I figured I’d be the only one who ever knew such gold even existed.

But,...

Get a bunch of people together who worked on a project and they’ll have stories. That’s what this one is – backstage stories from “Tales From The Crypt”. How to describe the experience of making “Tales From The Crypt“… It was unique, for starters!

Back in the 1990’s when we made Crypt, the feature world was the feature world and the TV world was the TV world. The two didn’t intersect the way they do now. Occasionally, a TV star like John Travolta or Robin Williams would break through and cross over. Once they made it to features, they never looked back at TV.

And a feature actor who did a TV series? The obvious question was when’s the retirement party?

That isn’t how the entertainment world is now. These days, TV is the creative skunk works.

We knew while we were making “Crypt” that it was a special experience. But, it wasn’t until we’d all had careers and lives after Crypt that we could fully appreciate just how special doing “Crypt” was. For starters, anthologies aren’t like other TV shows. Each episode is a thing unto itself. Whereas a regular series has standing sets and regular characters, an anthology episode has to invent a whole world every time out. It’s a staggering but amazing challenge. It produces a whole other set of backstage stories.

Great anthologies are transcendent. “The Twilight Zone” is the gold standard. If anything, that’s what we aspired to. But, as important as the stories are, it’s the host who ties it all together. With Crypt, the Crypt Keeper was everything. For better or worse, during the six years I worked on Crypt, I wrote every word the Crypt Keeper ever said. Boy, could I tell some backstage stories about that guy!

In all honesty, not every episode of “Tales From The Crypt” is a gem. Some are a little hard to watch, But some episodes? They still make us incredibly proud that we made them.

In this episode, we put the band back together to talk about Crypt – and spin a few tales about the making of “Tales”. And we’ll put you right in the room with us!

The classic Martini is simple. Elegant. Ice cold gin or vodka with a whisper of vermouth. It’s the perfect end of the day cocktail. This episode will feature another kind of cocktail – a lively conversation wherein the Dads From The Crypt will interview Tales From The Crypt.

Dads From The Crypt

First, let me introduce the Dads From The Crypt – my partners in crime on this podcast. The Dads are a lovely group of Tales From The Crypt fans (who also happen to be dads). They do a really delightful podcast (called “Dads From The Crypt” where 1) they review all 93 episodes of Crypt one at a time, and 2) give parenting advice.

When DFTC’s Jason Stein first told me that? I knew I had to work with the group.

First, Jason interviewed me for an episode of his podcast. Then, he asked if I was up for another interview – this one about “Bordello of Blood”.

“Jason,” I said, “The story of Bordello’s making is more than just one podcast. It’s…” and I stopped as the inspiration dawned on me – “…a podcast unto itself“.

And here we are.

A Change Of Plans!

In movie-making lingo, the “martini” is the last shot of the day. Originally, this was going to be the final episode of the podcast but, things changed. More episodes happened. A season two is coming! Well get to that.

In the meantime – I’ll savor this martini as I slip into a chair for my Dads From The Crypt interview. Then we’ll serve up a whole pitcher of martinis as the rest of the “Tales From The Crypt” crew (Gil Adler, Victoria Burrows, Ed Tapia, Todd Masters, Greg Melton, Randall Thropp and Todd Masters) sit down for interviews, too.

A guy named Cody Whitehouse coined the movie making term “martini” in 1989. The idea: “the next shot will be out of a glass”. That won’t be the case here, with this episode, the next “shot” will come from the Dads From The Crypt.

As you’ve probably gained from listening to this podcast, working for Joel Silver was an adventure. So, if you like stories about Joel, you’re gonna love this episode.

The Joel Silver Fan Club

In this one, we tell the story of the time our boss, Joel Silver, directed an episode of HBO’s “Tales From The Crypt“. The episode, “Split Personality” stars Joe Pesci and Joey Pantoliano. It’s not half bad! But making it with Joel in the director’s chair – that’s a story!

It’s not surprising that stories about Joel seize the imagination. As we discuss in the podcast, show business has always attracted larger than life people. If you either don’t have an ego to match or the personality to live with such egos, show biz ain’t for you. Everything that makes a Joel Silver (or working for him) entertaining, also makes him hard to work with. And for.

But, even in an industry filled with Tasmanian Devil-like personalities, Joel’s stands out. It can be soul-destroying working for people like Joel. It can be exhilarating too. The strange thing is – for all the bizarre, unbelievable stories we tell here about Joel? Most of us would work with him again.

It ain’t the money. It’s the creative buttons Joel pushes. Underneath the chaos, there’s an artist. I don’t know how else to explain it…

Now, as this podcast has described, working with first-time directors wasn’t new to us. We prided ourselves on working as seamlessly with the first timers our executive producers sometimes asked us to “school” as we did with veterans like Billy Friedkin and John Frankenheimer. But, none of the first time directors we worked with posed quite the challenges that working with our boss Joel Silver did – especially to Gil Adler.

More Great Crypt Stories!

Once we start talking about directors, it’s hard to shut up.

We talk actors, too. Among the many names that’ll pop up: Joe Pesci, Buck Henry, Gary Fleder, Russell Mulcahy, George Burns and Jan de Bont.

We’ll also tell a story about iconic actor Joey Pantoliano and how Joey gave me a literal haircut on the set of an episode of “The Outer Limits” that we did together. I have photos to prove it really happened, too!

Hi, this is Alan Katz and have I got a podcast for you! It’s the absolutely true, jaw-dropping story about Hollywood sausage-making told from the sausage point of view. You’ll hear about big stars with even bigger egos and Hollywood producers behaving like psychopaths. Thrill to waves of wretched excess, buckets of bad attitude and great, steaming piles of truly terrible behavior.

In this podcast, you’ll observe people doing things that normal people just don’t do.

A Love For Movie Making Craft

But, this also is a story about a very real love for movie-making told by movie makers. It’s about what happens when craftspeople find their craft suddenly turning into crap.

Twenty-five years ago, the creative team behind HBO’s hit horror series “Tales From The Crypt” set out to make three “Crypt” branded feature films for Universal Pictures. The first film out the gate – “Demon Knight” – was highly successful! But something bizarre happened on the way to the Crypt team putting out a second successful feature film. We hit a wall – and the damned wall hit back!

Did We Mention We Have Stars?

“The How NOT To Make A Movie Podcast” is a brutally honest, personal expose about what happens when Hollywood movie making goes horribly off the rails. Before we’re done, everyone from Sly Stallone to Joel Silver to Corey Feldman to Tom Hanks, to Dennis Miller to Billy Friedkin to Bob Zemeckis will play a part. And that’s just for starters!

You’ll laugh, you’ll cry, you’ll plotz! The last one I guarantee. It’s a Yiddish word that means “enjoy”. If you like podcasts about famous people and movies and everyone acting crazy – you’re gonna love “The How NOT To Ma...

With this episode, I’m going to bring Season 1 of “The How NOT To Make A Movie Podcast” to an end – but only because there’s a sequel coming – a Season Two of “The How NOT To Make A Movie Podcast”! It’ll be about the same thing but sorta different! Before I get too deep into sequels though, I need to finish with all the old business first. I’ve still got a few last Season 1 stories to tell.

Music From The Crypt

When we were running “Tales From The Crypt“, one of the elements that mattered a lot to Gil was music. Gil has mentioned that he starts his “directing process” by trying to imagine what the music would be. It sets an important tone in his head. Literally. Gil reached out to feature film composers. In part, that was because our mandate was “don’t look or sound like a TV show!” When we made Crypt, TV shows sounded one way and feature films sounded another.

Gil brought in big name feature composers like Chris Boardman (“The Color Purple”), Jay Ferguson (“Terminator”), James Horner (“Titanic”) and Alan Silvestri (“Forrest Gump”). We got those feature composers to do our “dumb little TV show”. Actually, getting them often just involved picking up the phone. Everyone wanted to “do” Crypt.

It had a “mystique”.

Hiring Superman

The first Crypt episode Gil directed was called “What’s Cookin“. It’s about a couple who own a failing cafe. When their landlord goes to evict them, the homeless guy who sweeps up for them steps in “to help”. When the couple show up the next day, expecting to be locked out, instead, they find the doors open and a pile of fresh steak in the fridge. Unsure what this means, the wife throws a steak onto the grill and the smell brings more customers in the door than they’ve ever had. Success! She throws more steaks onto the grill. The problem – the steaks all came from the landlord who’s hanging in the meat locker in back!

Having executive producers like Joel Silver, Bob Zemeckis, Walter Hill and Dick Donner gave us huge advantages when it came to casting. Dick Donner – director of “The Omen“, “

Are you looking for your next great podcast fix! Maybe you’re a little fried on true crime stories or you need a break from politics for two seconds. Sound familiar? Then have I got the podcast for you! In season one of “The How NOT To Make A Movie Podcast”, we told the story of “The Making Of Bordello Of Blood” – a horror movie nobody wanted to make. Actually, making Bordello was scarier than anything in Bordello!

If you haven’t heard season one yet, we highly recommend it.

Now, in season two, we expand the franchise. “Horror stories from across the movie-making trenches”. More painful personal stories of movie-making craft turning into crap.

S2E1 – THE Crypt Keeper Interview

We’re super excited about Season Two’s premier episode! We have a conversation that’s never been had before between the four people responsible for creating Tales From The Crypt’s iconic Crypt Keeper.

It’s true! The four people responsible for creating the Crypt Keeper have never spoken together before about creating the Crypt Keeper. We’ve never discussed the fact that none of us own a bit of him. Not Kevin Yagher who built the puppet. Or John Kassir who voices him. Not the podcast’s co-host Gil Adler who produced and directed the Crypt Keeper segments. And not me – the guy who put all those words and terrible puns into the CK’s animatronic mouth.

HBO’s “Tales From The Crypt” was unique in its time. The ad slogan “It’s not TV, it’s HBO” came about during the show’s very first cast and crew screening. Someone in the audience said it. To this day, “Crypt” remains incredibly popular. Everyone keeps trying to revive it (M. Night Shyamalan tried most recently). As important as the EC comics are to the franchise, when people think of “Tales From The Crypt”, they don’t think of the comics first, they think of The Crypt Keeper. He’s everything. And, for the first time ever, we’re going to talk about how that happened.

If you love movies or if stories about movie-making are catnip to you, if you just love funny stories period, you are gonna love this podcast. Did I mention there’ll be plenty of inside dirt?

“The How NOT To Make A Movie Podcast: Horror Stories From The Movie Making Trenches”. Check it out at “How-not-to-make-a-movie-dot-com (separated by dashes except for dot-com). Or find us wherever you go to find your favorite podcasts!

First of all, it’s good to be back for a second season! Better still to be back with company. As we kick off Season Two of “The How NOT To Make A Movie Podcast”, we really do become a “we”. Former creative partners Alan Katz and Gil Adler are now current creative partners! One of the bonus content features coming to this site very soon will be inside dope on the various creative projects we’re working on together. But that’s content for another day. Today’s content is special all by itself. Today we bring you “THE Crypt Keeper Interview”. The Crypt Keeper interview that’s never been had before. Hands down, the best Crypt Keeper interview ever!

Not Just Any Crypt Keeper Interview

In today’s episode, the four people responsible for creating and producing one of the world’s most iconic characters discus how that happened. The cool part? We’ve never had this conversation together. Ever.

But, it’s about time we did.

First, Meet Alan & Gil

In Season One of “The How NOT To Make A Movie Podcast”, Alan and Gil told their stories of how they got involved in doing “Tales From The Crypt”. The stops along the way included “The Hitchhiker“, “Freddy’s Nightmares: The Nightmare On Elm Street TV Series“, “Vietnam War Story” and “Children Of The Corn II“. As Alan and Gil describe, Life doesn’t really begin until you’ve got your own Joel Silver stories.

Fans of Joel Silver stories from season one rejoice! There’s never an end to Joel Silver stories!

Meet Kevin Yagher

It would surprise most people to learn how exactly The Crypt Keeper came to be. First, there was KEVIN YAGHER’s inspired puppet. By the time Kevin and Crypt stumbled on each other, Kevin’s career had already intersected with Gil’s a few times. Both worked on “The Hitchhiker” and “Freddy’s Nightmares: The Nightmare On Elm Street TV Series”. Kevin insists that, for him, getting Crypt was an accident of fate – and the physical location of his monster shop. Kevin then tells the story of how he auditioned all the actors who read for The Crypt Keeper. A couple of famous actors were sure they’d nailed the part. Kevin disagreed. And then John Kassir walked in the door…

Meet John Kassir

The instant Kevin heard JOHN KASSIR‘s voice, he recognized it as the Crypt Keeper’s. Want to experience a treat? Listen to John Kassir talk about how he created the Crypt Keeper’s unmistakable voice and the CK’s now world famous laugh. You’ll never watch “The Wizard Of Oz” the same way ever again.

As with all the stories we tell on this podcast, no one in show biz is safe. Why, in this episode, we’ll even drag in James Remar, Steven Spielberg and the enti...

With Guest David Brecher

The creative process is entirely unpredictable. Even creatives who genuinely aspire to produce greatness every time out can’t predict that they will produce greatness. It’s always a crap shoot. So it is with podcasts as it is with movies and with TV shows. In this episode, Gil and I set out to talk about “writing funny” with Gil’s old friend DAVID BRECHER. David’s worked with and around comedians his whole career. He toured for years with Bette Midler. He’s well versed in everything funny. That includes Life, There’s nothing funnier than Life.

Turns out, what’s really funny is the paths we all took to show biz success.

Gil began his professional life as a production accountant working for a guy named Sid Finger in New York. Gil produced plays. He produced a reading early on with a very young unknown named Robert De Niro. And he produced a very funny show that he brought over from the Edinburgh Theatre Festival called “El Grande De Coca Cola”.

“El Grande de Coca Cola was the first show Alan ever saw in New York. The circle is complete!

Meet Our Friend David Brecher

At present, David owns a teleprompter company that provides teleprompters (and David as the teleprompter’s operator) for, among other topline projects, “The Tonight Show With Jimmy Fallon” and “Saturday Night Live”. Did we mention that David’s been around funny people most of his life? Running teleprompters for many of them the past few years has given David some fascinating insights. Funny people are notoriously unhappy. It’s probably related somehow.

From Off Broadway to Australia, from Hollywood to the Carnegie Deli, from Sid Caesar to The Crypt Keeper to Superman Returns. This one goes a lot of different places and covers a lot of ground. Life is endlessly funny. But, what’s really funny is how fast it goes.

In this episode of “The How NOT To Make A Movie Podcast: Horror Stories From The Movie Making Trenches”, we sit down with one of the biggest casting directors in the business, Victoria Burrows. Or, as we prefer to put it, we go “Casting About With Victoria Burrows”.

In season one of “The How NOT To Make A Movie Podcast, we spent a long, long, long time talking about casting. If you remember (or, if you don’t), casting was among our most significant failures while making “Bordello Of Blood”. That is, how we cast our three leads. Or, rather, how our executive producer Joel Silver cast our three leads. Joel was our boss. He had final cut. Though we had three terrific actors in mind, Joel had ideas of his own and that’s where we went.

To be honest, “Bordello Of Blood” was never going to be a horror classic (or even a semi-classic like “Demon Knight” is). But, had we cast the movie the way Gil Adler (the movie’s director), Victoria Burrows (our casting director) and I (its co-writer and producer) originally imagined, it absolutely would have been better.

As “Bordello of Blood” demonstrates, cast your movie or TV show wrong and you’re doomed.

Headshots

As Victoria tells it, the day she realized she wanted to be a casting director was the day she found herself. Casting is (most of) her life. Animal rescue also is very important to Vic; she talks about that passion (and what listeners can do to help support this very worthy cause). She also talks about softball.

For years (before the pandemic), Victoria hosted a yearly pickup softball game/birthday party at Rancho Park in West LA. Six, seven, eight hundred people showed up every year including lots of celebrities. Here’s a blog post written by one of the event’s attendees.

Hopefully, while we’re casting about with Victoria Burrows, you’ll get to know her, too. Hanging with Vic is always a pleasure!

In this episode of “The How NOT To Make A Movie Podcast”, we sit down with a master storyteller: writer/director/producer Steve de Souza. You may not know Steve’s name, but you definitely know his work: 48 Hrs, Die Hard, Die Hard 2, Commando, Streetfighter, Judge Dredd, Beverly Hills Cop 2. Steve practically invented the modern action picture. He’s one of a handful of writers in the “Two Billion Dollars Club”. Those are writers whose collective work has brought in over two billion bucks. Steve’s made a lot of people a lot of money telling a lot of stories. Funny thing is? You’ll never hear another story like Steve’s. Steve de Souza has a story all right!

The Crypt Angle

Gil and I first met Steve when he wrote and directed an episode of “Tales From The Crypt” during our first season on the show. In “Carrion Death”, Kyle Maclachlan plays a murderous bank robber who’s on the run after a heist goes bad. He tries to escape a relentless motorcycle cop who chases him across the desert. It’s pretty much a one-man show; Kyle’s very good. For Steve, it was one more highlight in a career filled with them.

The Genesis Of A Jewmaican

In this, part one of our interview with Steve, he’ll tell his own genesis story including why he refers to himself as a proud “Jewmaican”. You and I may have family histories, Steve has a family saga that includes a pirate. Did we mention that Steve de Souza has a story?

We’ll follow Steve from the moment he realized he wanted to be a movie maker to the moment he began to achieve it. He epitomizes the “anything can happen” nature of show business like few others. There’s no better illustration than Steve’s first week in LA. He went from zero to sixty in record time. It’s a hell of a story!

Before he became one of the screenwriting gods, Steve conquered television. He wrote for The Gemini Man, The Six Million Dollar Man and The Bionic Woman, V, Super Carrier and Knight Rider. TV taught Steve to be quick and good. And how to tell all kinds of stories.

So, settle in for Part One of a real treat as Steve de Souza tells his story.

This episode picks up where E4 left off. And then it gets even more epic. Listening to episode 3 is not mandatory. It wouldn’t hurt, but this one stands on its own. It’s a big episode in more ways than one. It covers a lot of incredible territory from the making of classic feature films “48 Hrs” and “Die Hard” to “Commando” to “Streetfighter”. Steve de Souza has a story (or two or three).

If you’re a fan of the movie “Die Hard”, this episode is going to make you smile. For starters, Steve takes us way behind the scenes on the making of this classic movie. “Die Hard” is a bona fide classic. The National Film Registry selected “Die Hard” (along with 824 other films) “for preservation because of their cultural, historical or aesthetic significance”. If you had told Steve – or anyone involved in making “Die Hard” – that people would even remember it 30 years later, they’d have been thrilled. More to the point, if you had told them that “Die Hard” would be some peoples’ go-to Christmas movie? They’d have wondered what you were smoking. It wouldn’t even be legal now.

Is “Die Hard” A Christmas Movie?

Steve’s erudite, fully researched (he’s got bells and whistles!), mini-presentation compares “Die Hard” to “White Christmas” and asks the question “which one is the real Christmas movie?”

That part of the podcast would be worth the price of admission (if we charged any).

Dads From The Crypt

In keeping with its epic status, the interview also features our friend JASON STEIN (of Dads From The Crypt) joining the interview firing squad. With Jason aboard, we talk about Steve writing and directing “Streetfighter” and working with actor Raul Julia on his last feature film (before succumbing to stomach cancer in 1994). We’ll also talk about Steve’s work on “Tales From The Crypt”.

Crypt fans and aficionados consider Steve’s episode – “Carrion Death” – among the very best episodes ever. Jason has questions.

Finally, Steve will fill us in on what he’s working on now. Since he got here, Steve’s been one of the busiest people in all of Show Biz. He never stopped.

It’s EPIC!

Among the cast of characters in this episode: Arnold Schwarzenegger, Bruce Willis, Kyle McLachlan, Sheena-Queen-of-the-Jungle and even ELON MUSK!  Working at the peak of the entertainment industry can put a person in contact with almost anyone.  

As we said – an epic episode with an epic guest. If you love movies and moviemaking, this is both a treat and a master class. We repeat what we said: Steve de Souza has a story.

Welcome to our Halloween podcast – How NOT To Make A (Monster) Movie. One of the masters of movie make up special effects is our very good friend Todd Masters. We’re sure you remember Todd vividly from Season One of The How NOT To Make A Movie Podcast. Todd became Tales From The Crypt’s permanent in-house effects guy starting season four. He created the monsters in Demon Knight – now considered a classic horror movie. And, when our talented but inexperienced special effects team in Vancouver began to crash and burn, Todd was the reinforcement we sent to save the day. Todd Masters really is a movie monster master.

If you like monster movies – if you like special effects period – you’ll enjoy the hell out of this conversation. For starters, we talk a fair amount of “Tales From The Crypt”. How could we not? Todd talks about some of his very favorite make up effects from Crypt. One he’s especially proud of? Steve Buscemi’s squished eyeball in the “Forever Ambergris” episode.

Of High Stakes & Butt Steaks

Sometimes it can be “murder” getting a make up special effect to work right. Great effects take time and money – which, unfortunately, one doesn’t always have in the heat of production battle. There’s a very real “seat of the pants” element to makeup special effects – even great ones. The stakes are always high.

We’ll also talk about working with directors like William Friedkin, Bob Hoskins, Walter Hill, Bob Zemeckis, Larry Wilson, Gary Fleder and the under-appreciated but incredibly talented Bill Malone.

Where do these ideas come from? What makes otherwise normal people obsess on depicting gore so it looks utterly real? To that end, we’ll talk how Todd crafted some of Crypt’s most exquisitely gory effects – like the squished eyeball, the tattoo that comes to life in “On A Dead Man’s Chest” and the “butt steak” from “What’s Cookin”.

Todd will also talk a little about his work on “Yellowjackets”.

Ultimately, this is a conversation between old friends, talking shop. And monsters. Enjoy!

If you really want to know what’s happening on any film or TV set, the last people you should ask are the executives. We know nothing of value. We may have a pretty good fix on where the budget is, but we have no idea who’s sleeping with whom. Film and TV sets are emotionally overwrought places where people form intense bonds for short periods of time. Very conducive to creativity and having affairs. Terrible for sustaining actual grown up relationships. If you really want to know who’s forming intense bonds, having affairs and sleeping around, go ask “the pretties” – hair and makeup or, alternately, wardrobe. These are the people on any movie set who really know what’s happening to whom and why. If it’s dirty laundry you want, you’ve come to the right place!

When Things Get “Intimate”

“Hurry up and wait” perfectly sums up life on a film or TV set. Lots of mad rushing about, lots of sitting around waiting. That equals time to talk, gossip, shoot the shit and confess even. One of the wardrobe department’s jobs on any set is to do actual dirty laundry. Whether people know it or not, their dirty laundry tells on them.

In today’s episode of the podcast, we welcome Randall Thropp. Listeners to season one of the How Not To Make A Movie Podcast remember Randall’s stories about Crypt. He also worked on the Bordello reshoots when we returned to Los Angeles.

As you’ll hear (and see), Randall tells a lot of great stories. We’ll talk about a mutual mentor, the under-appreciated documentary filmmaker Greg Shuker (he pretty much invented cinema verite single handedly). And, we’ll talk about “Who’s Afraid Of Baby Jane” (Randall worked on the remake)… “The Strip”… “Tony & Tina’s Wedding”… “The Brady Bunch” movies and “The Shining” (Mick Garris’s remake). Also, we’ll talk about Randall’s work with the Academy Of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences Museum. It’s awesome – and well worth a visit, maybe even several!.     

And we will talk actual dirty laundry.

We say this a lot around here at the How NOT To Make A Movie Podcast: one of the real big pleasures of working in film and TV is that you get to work with some terrific people. Our guest today is one of those terrific people. It’s just a stone cold fact: Bill Sadler is a really nice guy. Hell, he’s nice in the extreme.

He’s also super talented.

Bill’s Bio

Aside from doing both “Tales From The Crypt” feature films (Bill stars as the hero of “Demon Knight” and acts as the Mummy opposite the Crypt Keeper in “Bordello Of Blood“) and appearing in multiple episodes of “Tales From The Crypt“, Bill has been part of some truly iconic movies. He played Death in the “Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey” and “Bill & Ted Face The Music”, Colonel Stuart in “Die Hard 2”, and President Matthew Ellis in “Iron Man 3” and the “Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D.” movies.

He also played the inmate Heywood in “The Shawshank Redemption“. Ironically, Shawshank wasn’t a hit when it opened. In fact, it bombed – probably because the title’s not very good. Video resurrected Shawshank from obscurity and gave it the second chance it needed.

“Shawshank” is very definitely a classic. Horror fans now consider “Demon Knight” a classic horror movie, too. In time, the Bill and Ted movies may achieve some kind of minor classic status. Certainly Bill’s work as Death in the movies deserves classic status.

He turns Death into a kind of vaguely lovable loser with a hilarious accent.

Talking Craft

We talk a lot about craft in the interview. Acting craft, writing craft, moviemaking craft. We talk about the challenges that produce great work. And, we’ll talk a lot about passion. What makes anyone a great collaborator? Passion for collaboration.

Bill’s collaborated with everyone from Morgan Freeman to Walter Hill (one of Crypt’s executive producers), to Bill Condon (Bill’s favorite director), to Claire Danes and Dennis Quaid (they all just worked together on Steven Soderbergh’s “Full Circle” for HBOMax.

This conversation feels like a pair of comfortable slippers. It’s that warm and familiar. Bill Sadler isn’t just a very, very nice guy. He also happens to be an amazing actor and a superb collaborator.

And, boy, does he have some great stories to tell!

The short answer is YES! You absolutely can believe Taye Diggs and that’s the whole point of this episode! We ask the question “What makes an actor ‘believable’?” And, the actor we’re using for demonstration purposes in this episode is the terrific Taye Diggs who, it just so happens, Gil (Adler) has cast twice. The reason Gil’s cast Taye twice is because Gil loves how believable Taye is. If an audience doesn’t believe an actor, nothing the writers or directors do (or have done) will matter. So, regardless of anything else an actor brings to work each day, nothing is anywhere near as important as believability.

From a film or TV producer’s POV, we don’t want actors to act. The camera will see it and we’ll just have to cut it all out. There are differences between acting on the stage and acting for the camera. Does stage training make actors better at acting for the camera? Spoiler alert: we think so – and Taye’s the perfect example of what theatrical training brings to any actor’s A-game. That’s their “acting game” of course.

On the film side, Taye’s shown off his song and dance chops in both “Chicago” and “Rent”. Taye was repeating for the camera the role he’d originated on Broadway. Taye also got Stella back her groove and, as we said above, he’s worked twice for Gil. One of those times was in the horror movie “House On Haunted Hill”.

For a little while – back in the late 990’s and early 2000’s, Gil produced a series of horror films for Dark Castle Entertainment – a company Bob Zemeckis and Joel Silver created. Dark Castle focused on remaking the films of 1950’s horror maestro William Castle. In the 1940’s and 50’s Castle churned out a ton of pulp titles like “The Crime Doctor’s Warning”, “Johnny Stool Pigeon”, “Slaves Of Babylon” and “New Orleans Uncensored”.

Castle excelled at horror. But, he didn’t approach horror – or movie-making – in a conventional way. He loved using gimmicks to market his movies. Hell, Castle built the marketing gimmicks right into the movies themselves. Right into the movie theaters themselves.

Castle’s “The Tingler” is about a scientist who discovers that a parasite called a “tingler” lives inside human beings, feeding on their fear. A person can tell a tingler’s present because they can feel their spine tingling. To achieve that effect in reality, Castle installed vibrating devices in the movie theater seats showing his movie.

In his “House on Haunted Hill”, Castle equipped some theaters with a technology he called “Emergo“. Emergo was a plastic skeleton emerging from a hiding place and flying at the audience, scaring the crap out of them.

Goofy, yes. But, it worked. The audience loved it. They believed. And believing is everything.

We’ll talk about how “believing” happens. Along the way, Taye will also talk about working on Broadway, the joys of being “theatrical”, how much he loved his years at Syracuse University and how much Gil hated it by comparison (they’re both alums). We’ll talk a lot about acting. About what makes an actor “believable”.

Can we believe Taye Diggs?

We repeat our earlier answer (a little more emphatically) – not just YES, but “HELL, YES!!!” Want proof? Listen in!

In this episode, Gil and I invite you to hang out with us and shoot the shit. But – before we forget (and while we have your attention) – please join us Saturday December 17 at NOON Pacific time for a “TABLE READ FOR CHARITY”. The MOTION PICTURE HOME (run by the Motion Picture Television Fund) is a great, worthwhile charity. They take care of film folk in need. We’ll be table reading “Dead Easy” – the script for the second “Tales From The Crypt” movie that never happened. “Bordello Of Blood” happened instead.  

Crypt’s Early Days

One of the joys of doing Crypt was getting to work with some really big stars. They really do breathe rarified air. What’s it like working at that level for the very first time? That’s one of the stories Alan will tell about working with Michael J. Fox who directed “The Trap” the first Crypt episode Gil and Alan produced. At the end of the day, it’s about the show – nothing else. Everyone’s as good as their work. Stars become co-workers and partners in crime.

“Rust” & Film Set Safety

No one should ever die on a movie or TV set. No one should ever get hurt. But, definitely no one should ever die. The “Rust” tragedy won’t ever end for the people involved. It should never have happened. Gil especially is obsessive about set safety. On “Freddy’s Nightmares”, we did numerous fire gags. On Crypt, we did lots of gun gags. It’s inconceivable that live ammo gets to any film set. How the hell did it get to the “Rust” set?

How Many Takes Is Too Many?

We’ll close it all out with a story about German director Uli Edell. When he directed the “Came The Dawn” episode, he established a record that has gone unbroken: he went 37 takes into a scene before Gil raced out to the set to stop him personally. We expected directors to get three or four takes of scenes. Five at the very most. Thirty-seven posed a huge problem!

So – pull up a chair (if you’re not already sitting) and “sit a spell”. Gil and I are shootin’ the shit. And there’s lots!

Doing this podcast has been the ultimate unexpected journey. It all started when when the Dads From The Crypt interviewed me for an episode of their podcast. The moment Jason Stein – one of the dads – told me the group’s franchise – reviewing Crypt episodes and giving parenting advice – they had me. And I thoroughly enjoyed the interview. When Jason asked if I’d be interested in sitting for another interview – about “Bordello of Blood” – I told him: “Jason, the story of Bordello’s tortured making is bigger than just one interview. Why, it’s a whole podcast unto itself!” And that’s how it started – this ultimate unexpected journey. Nine months later, the world has changed – entirely for the positive!

That’s the most delicious irony! Making Bordello Of Blood changed my life entirely in negative ways. That making a podcast about Bordello would have the opposite effect? Man, who is writing this insanity?

Long Live The Fediverse!

Speaking of bonkers – how bonkers is it that Elon Musk is murdering Twitter? The good news is that he turned us all onto the fediverse. It’s really the fediverse and Mastodon that I’m thinking about as I republish Season One, Episode One of this podcast – the one that started it all.

There are eerie parallels between Elon Musk wrecking Twitter and Joel Silver carelessly wrecking the second Tales From The Crypt feature film. It’s very uncomfortable when circumstances beyond your control take over your life and happiness. Ultimately, Gil and I were powerless to save ourselves or our movie just as most Twitter users are powerless to save Twitter.

But, whereas Twitter will not have a happy ending, Gil and I are having one. We owe it all to this podcast.

Thank You Clark Collis & EW!

A couple of things we want to mention here. First – a huge thank you to to our audience. We’re nothing without ya! We also want to thank entertainment journalist Clark Collis and Entertainment Weekly. Clark interviewed Gil and I and then published a review of our podcast. He said some very kind things about it including that we’re “The Best Film Podcast of 2022”.

Thank you, Clark Collis, for the very kind words.

The Live Table Read For Charity

One last thing. On Saturday, December 17, 2022 at noon pacific time, we’re holding A LIVE TABLE READ FOR CHARITY. We’ll be reading the script for “Dead Easy”. Lost for all these years, this is the script we took with us to New Orleans. it’s also the script we took home with us after Joel told the production to come home from New Orleans because Universal Pictures (our studio) was pulling the plug.

The charity in question is the Motion Picture Home – a fabulous facility that takes care of film people in need. Your donation receipt will be your ticket to the reading. Please check back here or at our Patreon page for details.

So much has changed since we started doing this podcast! For one thing, Gil and I are working together again – on a project we’re very excited about. We’re having a blast writing i...

Wanna know how to break into the move and TV biz? Know where all the bodies are buried. In order to do that, you have to be in on the burying process. If you’re not leading the body-burying op, you must be assisting. In Hollywood, those people – the ones willing to bury the bodies with ya – those are the people you want on your team. In this episode of The How NOT To Make A Movie Podcast, we chat with our friend Ed Tapia (producer of “All American Homecoming” – second highest rated show on the CW). Back in the day, Ed was our assistant on “Tales From The Crypt” and “Demon Knight” and “Bordello Of Blood” and a bunch of other projects. Did Ed know where all the bodies were buried? Yeah – because Ed helped us bury them.

Geeking Out

Ed’s story could be a TV series unto itself. He’s a latter day Alger Hiss (boy, did I just age myself). He’s one of those guys who makes the sum greater than its parts. And, if you want to know how to break into show business (or into anything about which you’re passionate), take Ed’s story to heart. He went from being a great assistant to being a great producer in his own right.

Ed describes himself as a film geek. “American Graffiti” was the film that got under his skin. It compelled him. He’d spend whole days at the movies, buying one ticket and watching three or four. He loved movies. Now, he wanted to make them, too. Ed tells how he found his way to Tales From The Crypt and how joining our team changed his life.

Ed joining Gil and I changed our lives, too. It made our team better. Well, it did until we collectively slammed into “Bordello Of Blood” (or until Bordello slammed into us). However many buried bodies there were up till then? It was nothing compared to the pile making Bordello produced.

We cover a lot of ground in this one and drop some very cool names – everyone from Johnny Carson to Stan Lee to Quentin Tarantino to Timothy Hutton (he’s one of Ed’s idols – and Ed got to work with Tim on “American Crime” and loved the experience). There’s more than just bodies buried here – there’s gold!

Photo 89590408 / Buried Bodies © James Wagstaff | Dreamstime.com

Peter Iliff‘s passion for movies started with James Bond. He was six and his dad took him to see “Goldfinger” on the day it opened. They watched it twice. Now, it may seem strange – a dad taking his six year old to see a Bond film – but, strangely, something happened there in that darkened movie theater. An already strong bond between father and son grew stronger. But, also, a new bond formed – between Peter and those wonderful phantoms up on the screen.

For those unaware, Peter Iliff is a highly regarded screenwriter with some monster credits to his name as both a writer and director: Varsity Blues, Point Break and Patriot Games, the Enforcer and Rites of Passage for starters. He writes a lot about male bonding and male bonds. Whatever ignited inside Peter during Goldfinger burns brightly still.

Writers are like that. We may put stories in a hundred different locations, but, often, we’re trying to solve the same problem again and again (be it family dynamics, politics, love or whatever). What problem is Peter trying to solve? You’ll have to listen to the interview.

Peter’s been in this business for 45 years. He knows a lot of stuff – about writing and about writing for this business. It’s unlike anything else. Along the way – as he tells – Peter learned from some of the very best screenwriters – like William Goldman (“Butch Cassidy & The Sundance Kid”, “Princess Bride.”, “All The President’s Men”, “Magic”). If he wasn’t learning from them, he was borrowing their cashmere sweaters.

Or going nose to nose with a charging-at-him Gene Hackman (a man notorious for punching people in the nose). Or, directing for the first time on an episode of “Tales From The Crypt” (where we specialized in handling first time directors).

Peter also talks about getting sober – and getting healthier than he’s ever been. Happy, too. That’s the ultimate bottom line, isn’t it?

We also talk a lot about writing in this episode – about screenwriting in particular. It’s a curious craft we all chose to master. Screenwriters are never the last word on any film project.

This one is choc-a-block with cool stories about some of the biggest names in the business. It’s also choc-a-block with insight and a love for movies and an even bigger love for just being alive. Odds are, listening to this one, you’ll end up bonding with Peter Iliff.

Photo 96837851 © Antoniodiaz | Dreamstime.com

The body’s on the slab now. Let’s do the post mortem. This past Saturday, our little Podcast held a benefit for the Motion Picture Home – the MPTF. They’re a great organization that takes care of film folk in need. We performed a live table read of “Dead Easy“. That’s the “Crypt” film we never got to make (because we made “Bordello” instead). There’s this whole really good podcast all about it! The obvious question is “how’d it go?” The answer is “great!”

But, that’s just our opinion – Gil’s and mine. How about we open this to the floor and get some different perspective.

Chelsea Rebecca performed several roles in the the reading but her main role was Danny, the little boy. Jason Stein is one of the Dads From The Crypt. He was one of the table read’s producers. Through his horror connections, Jason found us Chelsea.

Boy, are Gil and I glad he did.

The Horror, The Horror…!

What began as a post mortem on the reading evolved into a thoughtful conversation about horror. About great horror and about horror that crosses the line. Chelsea speaks with very real authority about horror (as does Jason). She’s a fan with likes and dislikes. She’s also a talented content creator. Chelsea and her husband James Jannisse produce the very popular “Dead Meat Podcast” and “The Kill Count” on YouTube. “The Kill Count” – this is amazing – has almost 6 million subscribers.

Chelsea didn’t become a horror super fan until college. A class on horror movies at the University of Michigan opened her eyes. “Night Of The Living Dead” and “Texas Chainsaw Massacre” changed her life. Well, they changed her taste in movies forever and started her down the road to becoming Queen of the Dead. We’ll also talk about cos play and the feature film that Chelsea and James are working on right now.

One fascinating part of this conversation – how each horror fan’s taste in horror evolves over time. Life events – like having kids – can alter a horror fan’s likes and dislikes.

We live in a wonderful world where content creators can be content consumers at the very same time. We are over-brimming with great stories. And there’s an audience for almost every bit of it. Let the post mortem begin!

Photo 162755403 / Post Mortem © Marcos Calvo Mesa | Dreamstime.com

Tis the season to ask this essential question: Is “Die Hard” a Christmas movie?

Plenty of people already answer that with an emphatic “yes!” They’ve already made watching “Die Hard” one of their holiday season traditions. But is that only because “Die Hard” takes place over Christmas? Or, do they feel “Die Hard” captures something essential about the holiday season? Does it capture the Christmas Spirit?

Among the more emphatic “yesses!” is Steve de Souza’s. Steve wrote the screenplay for “Die Hard” (in addition to the screenplays for plenty of other classic action movies, too: 48 Hrs, Commando, Streetfighter, Judge Dredd).

As Steve will discuss, “Die Hard” was based on a novel which, itself, was a sequel. Nobody making it had the least inkling that it would become an iconic Christmas movie. They would have been happy with Die Hard just being a great action movie.

Steve uses the classic Hollywood Christmas movie “White Christmas” as his baseline. Not only does Steve make the case that “Die Hard” is a Christmas movie up there with classics like “White Christmas”, he proves that “Die Hard” is a much better Christmas movie for a whole lot of reasons.

Next we’ll ask “Would Freddy Kruger make a good Santa Claus replacement hire?

For a lot of people, 2022 was an outright annus horribilus. One to forget. That wasn’t the case for us here at the How NOT To Make A Movie Podcast. For starters, we came into being this year. That was a good thing (all things considered). We found a growing audience – that’s been even better. And then Entertainment Weekly called us “The Best Film Podcast of 2022”. That was extremely gratifying. So, choosing among our “best bits” this year has been the best kind of challenge.

Let’s Get Started!

Like Maria sings in “The Sound Of Music”, “Let’s start at the very beginning!” First “best bit” is our origin story – how Gil and I got “Tales From The Crypt” to begin with. We’d been creative partners for a few years by then. We wrote a few unproduced screenplays together but also a few episodes of “Freddy’s Nightmares” – the “Nightmare On Elm Street” TV series. Gil produced the show. He also directed the second episode we wrote.

“Tales From The Crypt” changed both our lives. We both sensed when we got Crypt that it would do that.

The Crypt Keeper & Joel Stories

Another “best bit”: the terrific conversation we had to start season two. For the first time ever, the four people responsible for actually creating the Crypt Keeper sat down together and discussed their creation. Iconic characters like the Crypt Keeper don’t just fall from the sky fully formed. They’re the product of intense creative energy and collaboration. The Crypt Keeper was no different.

Among the best of the best bits – Joel Silver stories. Joel Silver was a challenging boss in ways both good and bad. In this episode, we remember 1) a car ride with Joel wherein we almost hired Donald Trump to act in “Crypt”, 2) how Joel nearly caused an international incident when he crossed an international border without a single piece of personal ID and 3) how Joel got an order for the TV series “Perversions Of Science” through sheer force of will.

We really do thank you for making us part of your life this year! We believe 2023 is going to get  even better!

Photo 203697607 / 2022 Year Review © Enterlinedesign | Dreamstime.com

Welcome to our first new episode of 2023! We’re dropping a Joel Silver story we’ve been threatening to tell since we started this podcast last year. The Car Ride To Hell!

How do we know it ended up in Hell? Well, for starters, Donald Trump makes an appearance – two actually!

Here’s the setting. As you probably recall from Season One, Gil and I took over running “Tales From The Crypt” at the start of its third season – supposedly it’s last season. But, Gil and I turned around the franchise. We reinvigorated the storytelling and turned the Crypt Keeper into a franchise player. Gil and I began prepping Crypt’s season 4 (our second season running it). This often meant heading to Joel’s office at Warner Brothers in Burbank to consult; Joel was very hands on at times.

Now, one of the things that Gil and I learned quickly was that going to a meeting at Joel’s could easily eat up a whole day. Though the meeting itself might last minutes, one invariably waited for Joel. And waited, and waited… One needed to maintain very cool heels to work for Joel.

On the day in question, Gil and I cooled our heels outside Joel’s office for hours before he kidnapped us and took us on “The Car Ride To Hell”. Gil and I really were trapped with Joel. However crazy you think this experience is going to be, double your estimate. Then double it again. This is that crazy!

Hell Photo 109649322 © Ig0rzh | Dreamstime.com

The movie biz attracts all kinds. The horror biz attracts the most unusual among the movie biz. And those who succeed in the horror biz? They’re a truly special breed.

The House On Haunted Hill… The Tingler… 13 Ghosts… These were all competently made horror movies. What made them noteworthy and keeps them noteworthy is the man who made them: William Castle. A master showman, Castle understood one thing above all else: he knew how to sell tickets. It isn’t necessarily about how good or bad your play or movie is (Castle succeeded in the theater before he succeeded in the movies), it’s how good you are at promoting it. And, when it came to promoting his movies, no one could match Castle for panache, imagination or sheer chutzpah.

There’s A Gimmick!

If you’ve never encountered Castle before, you’re in for a treat!

Standing in for the maestro is his daughter Terry Castle (alas, William Castle died in 1977). Terry and Gil worked together when Gil produced a couple of Castle remakes (“House On Haunted Hill” and “13 Ghosts”) for Dark Castle Productions – the production company Joel Silver and Bob Zemeckis started specifically to remake Castle. Boy, does Terry Castle have a story to tell!

Despite being orphaned at 11, Castle rode life’s vicissitudes with remarkable improvisational skill. He quitting school at 15 to work for Bela Lugosi, got additional career help from Orson Welles (who became a lifelong friend) and ended up in Hollywood where he was one of the few people Columbia Pictures’ notoriously bad boss Harry Cohn actually liked. Castle directed dozens of B pictures before leaving Columbia for life as an independent producer.

As always, his flair for the dramatic guided him. His last big project (he produced it because the studio wouldn’t let him direct it): Rosemary’s Baby. That’s a lot of great movie-making over the course of one life. What’s crystal clear from our chat with Terry Castle is that her dad was a genuinely nice man who loved what he did for a living.

Film sets are a fascinating place to work. They definitely reflect the nature of the people working on them – especially at the top. But who’s really in charge of any set? Who’s the boss?

Most sets are like bee hives. And, while everyone thinks the director is queen bee, on the set itself, it’s really the first assistant director – the first AD – who’s running the joint. Now, they’re not the boss – they work FOR the boss. If it’s a feature film, the boss is the director. If it’s a TV show however, the bosses are the writer-producers. The first works for them.

They will see to it that the day’s work comes in on time and on budget.

That means when shit goes awry, the first person the shit’s gonna hit is the first. It’s a hard job and it requires a special kind of person.

Like our very good friend Tony Adler – no relation to Gil.

Personal History

Now – as you’ll hear, Tony and I go back a long, long way – to the Vassar College Drama Department. Boy, do we have stories.

Tony’s had a long, amazing career. He’s got some huge features in his bio: “Ragtime” and “American Beauty”. He’s worked on TV series like “Grace and Frankie”, “Heroes”, “Empire” and “Halo”. And, he’s worked with pretty much everyone in Hollywood from Milos Foreman to Steven Spielberg to Dustin Hoffman to Sam Mendes to David Hemmings.

Want some great stories from the sets of movies and shows you love? Tune out the world for an hour and enjoy a little movie making madness. Some of the best stories coming from any movie set happen ON the set.

And the first AD – our good friend Tony –  knows them. Where this episode’s concerned, if you want to know “who’s the boss?” It’s Tony!

Photo 36125862 / Director © Kts | Dreamstime.com

Nobody should ever die on a film or TV set. No one should ever get injured either but physical things happen (stunts, for instance). Injuries should should be rare. Death should be a complete stranger. With hundreds of hours of produced film and TV content under our belts, Gil Adler and I had the exact same reaction when the news dropped from the set of the movie “Rust”. It made our heads explode. How could that have happened?

On Oct. 21, 2021, actor/producer Alec Baldwin – on the set of “Rust” outside Albuquerque, New Mexico – discharged a prop firearm that had a live round in it. The bullet killed the film’s director of photography Halyna Hutchins and wounded its director Joel Souza. On the one hand, this was a tragic accident. On the other, it didn’t happen in a vacuum. People made this happen via a combination of carelessness, incompetence and ineptitude.

New Mexico Makes A Move

Yesterday, New Mexico added the potential for criminal behavior to the mix. They announced that they intend to prosecute Alec Baldwin and the movie’s armorer, Hannah Gutierrez Reed. Uncharged: the movie’s 1st assistant director, Dave Halls. He, apparently, reached a plea deal.

Gil and I aren’t the only ones scratching our heads over the latest developments. Most everyone in the business is perturbed by it. To help us get our heads around it, we’ve invited two guests. We just sat down with our good friend Tony Adler in S2E18 – Who’s The Boss. Tony is an accomplished 1st AD with a long, illustrious bio. Leigh Webb also had a long, illustrious career as a 1st AD. He worked for us on Tales From The Crypt (and shows like “Moonlighting”). Both Tony and Leigh have dealt with guns on their sets more times than they can count.

There’s a protocol. All one has to do is follow it. And yet…

Rust Makes Our Heads Explode!

Accidents on film sets make us angry. They should never happen though they do. What happened on the set of Rust makes our heads explode.

If you don’t know Charlie Flesicher’s name, you know his voice. He’s the voice of Roger Rabbit. He’s appeared – in human form – on TV and in movies since the 70’s. We worked with Charlie on “Demon Knight” – the first “Tales From The Crypt” branded horror movie. He plays Wally Enfield. It’s been a while since either Gil or I have spoken to Charlie. In this conversation, we all get to catch up! The headline: “Charlie Fleischer’s Still In Toon With The Universe”!

The Crypt Family

Now, as we’ve said here a bunch of times, one of the really great benefits of working on film and TV sets is that you work with – and hang with – some really fascinating people. Like Charlie Fleischer. Charlie was “family”. He’d worked a couple of times for Bob Zemeckis already (in addition to casting Charlie as Roger Rabbit, Bob also cast Charlie in “Back to The Future 2”). When casting suggested his name for that role, there never was another suggestion.

Even then, Charlie was way more than just Roger Rabbit. He was a regular on “Welcome Back Kotter” and “Laverne & Shirley”. He appeared on “Laugh-In” and “The Tonight Show With Johnny Carson”. The second time Charlie did the Carson show, he did panel. Sitting beside Johnny was the point of the exercise. Charlie had – and has – a solid body of acting work to his name and credit.

But, Charlie Fleischer is way more than just an actor. He’s a creative Renaissance Person. He paints. He creates music. And he writes scientific papers. In this interview, we’ll hit the Charlie Fleischer you might know already – the super talented stand up comedian who voices an iconic animated character. And then we spend considerable time with the Charlie you might not know yet.

That Charlie Fleischer will surprise you again and again. He really is in “toon” with the universe.

Here are the art pieces we reference in the podcast –

Charlie’s TED Talk about Gamma Ray Bursts and Moleeds –

If you’ve ever seen an episode of Tales From The Crypt, you’ve enjoyed the work of artist and comic book creator Mike Vosburg. When you sit and talk to Mike – aka Voz – you can’t help thinking “Wow, what a terrific person!” And then you look at his comic book art and you can’t help thinking “Wow, and he’s so drawn to the dark side.” I mean that in the nicest way possible of course!

Gil and I first met artist Mike Vosburg when we went aboard “Tales From The Crypt” at the start of its third season. Each Crypt episode began with a comic book cover depicting the episode’s most horrific moment. Mike drew the covers. Though Mike had been working in the comic book business for a long time by then, the Crypt gig suited him. He was already “drawn to the dark side”.

Comics Are Mike’s Life

Mike’s love of the comic book form began early. As a teen, he produced and edited the fanzine Masquerader. In time, his passion for comics took him to New York City where he worked for Marvel, DC and Charlton Comics among others. He worked with Stan Lee (as did Gil and I!) Before he headed west, he’d put his imprimatur on series like Thor, She-Hulk, Starfire and GIJoe.

Arriving in Hollywood, Mike got work drawing storyboards for feature films and TV shows. Storyboards help directors articulate their vision. That work eventually led him to Tales From The Crypt. We’ll talk comic books and working at Marvel. Penciling vs inking. John Frankenheimer, Ninja Turtles and film noir among other things. And, did I mention that Mike won an Emmy for directing episodes of Spawn on HBO? And, of course, we’ll talk a whole lot of Tales From The Crypt.

Welcome to a special, bonus episode of the How Not To Make A Movie Podcast: Alan & Jason visit the CreepIE-Con horror convention!

This past weekend was the Creepie-con horror convention in Ontario just outside Los Angeles. It’s not one of the big horror conventions, but being as it’s here in Southern California, it still attracts a fair amount of on-screen talent for signings and photos because “proximity”.

Now, I really hadn’t been to a horror convention before. That seems strange considering all the horror I’ve done. I went to Comic Con once – the year they first started releasing “Tales From The Crypt” DVDs. We did a panel about the show to a very packed room. It was a blast.

It was a while ago, too.

And, as Gil and I are about to unleash a streaming horror series upon the marketplace – and then, hopefully, the world – it seemed like a good time to get into the horror convention flow. So, I called Jason Stein – my other partner in crime on this enterprise. And, together, on Saturday, we headed east – to the Ontario Convention Center. And CreepIE-con.

Among the talent lineup: some of the cast of Scream, Matthew Lillard, Skeet Ulrich, Jamie Kennedy, Alex Winter, Lee Waddell, Lauren Lavera, Eliot Fulham, Felissa Rose (one of Jason’s favorites) and Damien Leone from “The Terrifier” (another of Jason’s favorites).

Also in the house – our friends Chelsea Rebecca and James Janisse, hosts of the spectacular “Dead Meat Podcast” and YouTube channel.

The most striking about the horror community – and the horror community already knows this about themselves – they are some of the sweetest people on the planet. And it is downright fun watching them have fun.

Ross Emery is both a director of photography and a cinematographer (we’ll discuss the differences). He and Gil worked together on two features – “Superman Returns” and “Valkyrie“. – both times as second unit director of photography. That’s another difference we’ll discuss during the podcast – the one between a “first unit” and a “second unit” on a film set. Superman, it turns out, was the first tentpole feature film shot entirely on digital cameras. The technology wasn’t quite ready for its closeup.

But, as it’s evolved, the technology has improved to the point where Marvel Studios (Ross has shot “Shang-Chi” and “The Wolverine“) no longer fix things in post production, they practically produce the whole thing there. Digital filmmaking really has changed filmmaking (it’s not even actual “film” making, is it?)

Pre-Digital

Over the course of his career, Ross has worked cheap like horror innovator William Castle and worked big (on movies like Superman Returns, Valkyrie, the Matrix movies and Alien: Covenant). He’s got stories from Hollywood’s “dark ages” – when they rolled actual film through the cameras.

Back then. as Ross describes it, film developing was a black art and DP’s could never be sure their work turned out okay until after they personally had eyeballed it. Fortunately for Ross, the magic, mostly, worked to his advantage. Along the way, Ross has worked on projects he remember fondly and a couple of unmitigated disasters. Usually, it comes down to the people involved in the project.

Since our podcast goes by the name “How NOT To Make A Movie”, we thought it’d be fun to talk about a movie that’s even more of a disaster than “Bordello Of Blood”. “The Island Of Dr. Moreau is infamous for being a creative nightmare on steroids. Our old pal John Frankenheimer directed it. We’ll swap war stories about the Frankenheimer Experience while Gil and Ross will swap remembrances about working with Bryan Singer.

Ross also has Harvey Weinstein stories. Ross worked for Harvey a bunch of times. As Ross will describe, one never chose to work for Harvey. Harvey decided you would work for him and that would be that. We also talk about how to light super hero movies – there really is a trick.

This one has an embarrassment of riches. I recommend getting lit to listen. But, even if you can’t get lit, it’s still a real pleasure to listen to.

Spoiler alert: this story has a happy ending. At its core, our podcast is the story of a creative relationship. How making a dumb horror movie destroyed that relationship. And how doing a podcast about making that dumb horror movie healed the wounds and reignited the relationship. That’s after not speaking to each other for twenty-five years. In fact, doing the podcast began a whole schmear of things unto itself!

How It All Began…

Gil Adler and I were poised to make a movie we thought would alter our careers for the better. “Dead Easy” was a psychological thriller. The whole “Tales From The Crypt” creative team were looking forward to making that movie. Hell, we spent six weeks in New Orleans prepping it. We were touring a swamp when Universal pulled the plug on “Dead Easy”, called us home to LA and told us “You’re doing ‘Bordello Of Blood'”‘ instead”.

Everything that happened after that was a catastrophe (of one kind or another).

We’ve always seen season one, episodes one-through-five as “our story”. Here, for the first time, we’ve put together all five episodes into one episode (well, into two episodes – the whole schmear was too large to publish as one single podcast – file size limits, ya know?). This episode contains parts one through four. The next podcast (S2E24 – which will drop almost concurrently) will contain part five).

And There’s More…!

We’ve also added a few tantalizing hints about the streaming show Gil and I are about to take out into the TV marketplace: “Are You Afraid?” Think of it as “Walking Dead” meets “Buffy The Vampire Slayer: meets “Sweeny Todd” (without the music). If you enjoyed the wicked fun of Tales From The Crypt, you’ll love “Are You Afraid?”

This episode/post is a continuation of S2E23 – Bordello of Blood: The Whole Schmear. I guess that makes this “the rest of the schmear”.

Spoiler alert: this story has a happy ending. At its core, our podcast is the story of a creative relationship. How making a dumb horror movie destroyed that relationship. And how doing a podcast about making that dumb horror movie healed the wounds and reignited the relationship. That’s after not speaking to each other for twenty-five years. In fact, doing the podcast began a whole schmear of things unto itself!

How It All Began…

Gil Adler and I were poised to make a movie we thought would alter our careers for the better. “Dead Easy” was a psychological thriller. The whole “Tales From The Crypt” creative team were looking forward to making that movie. Hell, we spent six weeks in New Orleans prepping it. We were touring a swamp when Universal pulled the plug on “Dead Easy”, called us home to LA and told us “You’re doing ‘Bordello Of Blood'”‘ instead”.

Everything that happened after that was a catastrophe (of one kind or another).

We’ve always seen season one, episodes one-through-five as “our story”. Here, for the first time, we’ve put together all five episodes into one one opus-sized episode (well, into two episodes – the whole schmear was too large to publish as one single podcast – file size limits, ya know?).

And, There’s More…!

We’ve also added a few tantalizing hints about the streaming show Gil and I are about to take out into the TV marketplace: “Are You Afraid?” Think of it as “Walking Dead” meets “Buffy The Vampire Slayer: meets “Sweeny Todd” (without the music). If you enjoyed the wicked fun of Tales From The Crypt, you’ll love “Are You Afraid?

But, first – we hope you enjoy the rest of the schmear!

Photo 38820468 © Balefire9 | Dreamstime.com

Sam Egan’s been writing TV shows (and the occasional feature film) for fifty plus years. His first big break was writing and producing the show “Quincy ME” with Jack Klugman. TV was very different back then. How we watched it was different. Strange but true: there used to be only three broadcast networks putting out TV shows that everyone watched. How writers and producers came up with those shows – that was different, too. Over the course of his “TV life”, Sam Eagan has watched the world change – and profoundly.

I worked with Sam for two seasons on Showtime’s version of “The Outer Limits”. Sam was the showrunner and I was one of the writing producers on staff. It was a wonderful two years. Sam, as you’ll experience, is very Zen in his approach to the problem-solving processes required to make a TV show.

Sam’s history is fascinating. His father survived the Holocaust; he was a prisoner at Auschwitz. He was the only survivor among his family. Sam was the product of his second marriage – the post Auschwitz one. Eventually Sam’s family arrived in America. Sam eventually arrived in Los Angeles.

Along the way, he did some writing for Rolling Stone (he was at Altamont!) and wrote and produced “Imagine” the documentary about John Lennon.

In the end, Sam found his way to TV – and he never stopped working thereafter (that is until he’d had enough and wanted to get off the show biz merry-go-round-from-hell). Sam spent time on shows like Snoops (with Tim and Daphne Reid), Northern Exposure, Jeremiah, V, Masters of Science Fiction, Continuum and The Listener. And, of course The Outer Limits.

We’ll also touch on the development process – then and now. Before streaming changed the TV business model, TV was all about syndication – the secondary market for TV shows where they live in perpetual reruns. Syndicated shows mostly ran five days a week (Monday through Friday) in a particular time slot. Ad cycles in TV run for thirteen weeks. So, the math’s simple: Thirteen weeks time five episodes a week equals sixty five. For a show to reach syndication, it had to produce sixty-five episodes.

Trust us – that’s harder than it looks.

Gil and I have also had TV lives. We’ll get to compare and contrast with Sam. It’s a glorious life, a TV Life. It’s not for everyone. But if you’ve got the chops or the utter foolishness to try?

It beats working.

Photo 97744853 / Old Tv © Dmitry Sosenushkin | Dreamstime.com

There’s no data to back this up, but most of the people making horror movies – like horror movie fans – are some of the nicest people on the planet. Our friend Tobe Hooper (along with his writing partner Kim Henkel) created one of the most iconic horror characters of all time: Leatherface from The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Ah, but there’s so much more to Chainsaw than just Leatherface. Just as there was so much more to Tobe Hooper.

How did a mild mannered college professor and documentary cameraman end up a horror movie icon? It started with talent. Tobe hit the ground with an amazing eye. While making a horror movies was a calculated decision, once Tobe committed to making a horror movie, he brought every bit of A game he had.

Before Texas Chainsaw Massacre, movie monsters were mostly supernatural (like vampires or werewolves) or back from the dead in some way (like Frankenstein’s monster). Chainsaw led the charge in making humans the monster. That changed the horror business. And that, in turn, changed the movie business.

Our guests in this episode are people who’ve worked with Tobe and fans who adore his work. Gil and I worked with Tobe on a couple of projects. “Haunted Lives” was a supernatural true crime pilot that we did for CBS. “Tales From The Crypt” needs no introduction. We’ll talk to Kim Henkel, Tobe’s writing partner on Chainsaw and several other features. Also we’ll talk to cinematographer Levie Isaacks.

Levie worked on Chainsaw but not as its camera person. At that point in his career, Levie was a news reader at a radio station in Texas. Tobe and Kim hired Levie to read the news copy at the top of the movie. In time, Tobe and Levie’s working relationship would flourish.

Gil also has some great Tobe stories. They were good friends up until Tobe’s untimely, unexpected passing.

So – curl up and get comfy with this one – we promise not to try and scare you (much).

One of the great things about doing “Tales From The Crypt” was the actors we got to work with. Kirk Douglass, Tom Hanks, Whoopi Goldberg, Michael J Fox, Isabella Rossellini, Daniel Craig among many, many others. We also got to work with an actor named Sherrie Rose. Hell, we liked working with Sherrie so much at Crypt that we hired her three times. Only William Sadler can compete. Bill also appeared in two Crypt episodes; he also appears in both Crypt feature films. Sherrie caught our attention early on.

She also caught director William Friedkin’s attention. In fact (as Sherrie will tell it), Billy essentially hired Sherrie in the room to play Vendetta in his “On A Dead Man’s Chest” episode. It’s about tattoos and the rock and roll world – two worlds Sherrie knew. What Billy Friedkin saw – it’s why we kept hiring Sherrie – is her unique combination of brains, balls and beauty.

Only Skin Deep

A few seasons later, we developed a script called “Only Skin Deep” about a strange, mask-wearing young woman who lures a violent man home from a costume party, seduces him and then cuts off his face. We only ever had one actor in mind for the strange, mask-wearing young woman: Sherrie Rose. In our minds, no one else could play it.

When we went off to do the first of the Crypt-branded feature films – Demon Knight – we cast Sherrie. Alas, most of her scenes ended up on the cutting room floor. It happens. But Sherrie’s never been one to lick her wounds. As you’ll see, Sherrie’s a dynamo. She’s a terrific producer, writer and director, too.

Me And Will

Sherrie co-wrote, co-produced and co-directed a terrific little indie feature film called “Me and Will” back in 1999. It’s about two women who skip out of rehab and go on a road trip (on motorcycles) to find the motorcycle used in “Easy Rider”. It’s beautifully shot. The acting is spot on. Patrick Dempsey’s in the cast as are Grace Zabriskie, Seymour Cassel, Keanu Reeves and M. Emmet Walsh. We really do recommend it!

As you’ll hear and see, Sherrie’s one of those people who seems to know everyone. She got Mick Jagger to give her a song for the “Me And Will” soundtrack for free. When the manager at The Viper Room on Sunset Strip wouldn’t let Sherrie use the room in the movie, she got it anyway after bumping into Johnny Depp – one of the space’s owners at an event. Also – when we cast Sherrie in “Dead Man’s Chest”, she got us rock legends Greg Allman and Steve Jones – because they were friends of hers.

If Sherrie has one strength above all – that serves her whether she’s acting, producing, writing or directing: she’s always totally prepared. Sherrie Rose is a content creation meal – well balanced and nutritious. We have a sneaking feeling a taste of Sherrie won’t be nearly enough.

For it’s last season, HBO sent “Tales From The Crypt” to London. It was an amazing adventure. How could it not be? But (if we’re honest – and that is our stock in trade here) the Crypt team didn’t go to London strictly to refresh the franchise (which needed it, frankly). Crossing the pond helped for sure! But – as with Bordello Of Blood (which we were editing at the time) – the Crypt team left Los Angeles mostly because our executive producer Joel Silver was at war with the union representing our crew. HBO didn’t oppose the idea at all.

In fact, taking Crypt to London gave us access to actors we hadn’t been able to cast previously. At Crypt, we paid all actors, directors and writers their guild minimums plus ten percent (to cover the agency fee). For actors who lived outside of Los Angeles (but still in the US or Canada), HBO usually covered the cost of flying them (up front in first class of course). They wouldn’t do it for anyone living outside North America. Of course, if we wanted to pay for the flight, that was fine. But those tickets weren’t in our budget.

We got to work with people like Bob Hoskins, Natasha Richardson, Steve Coogan, Ewan McGregor, Imelda Staunton, Jane Horrocks, and a pre-James Bond Daniel Craig. Alan Hume – director of photography of various James Bond and Star Wars movies shot two episodes of Crypt! We were based at Ealing Studios, one of the most fabled movie studios in England. It really was an amazing creative adventure!

Joining Gil and I for the discussion are Ed Tapia and Greg Melton. Regular listeners to this podcast will recognize Ed and Greg from earlier episodes. Ed was Gil’s assistant – but he was sooooo much more than that. These days, Ed Tapia is a very talented producer in his own right. He’s producing “All American Homecoming” for the CW. Greg Melton is one of the best production designers working in Hollywood. Or London. In addition to creating Crypt’s look, Greg production designed The Walking Dead.

We’ll discuss the joys of working in London and the difficulties. Our cultures clashed repeatedly. We’ve even got a few new Joel Silver stories (Joel came to visit us in London with all the prerequisite chaos).

So, kick back as we reminisce about the season “Tales From The Crypt” spent in London. Or, as the Crypt Keeper called it: “Scary, Olde England”.

You might not know the name Elliot Silverstein but you should. He directed a couple of very big movies (Cat Ballou and A Man Called Horse). He also helped invent TV directing back in the 1950’s and 1960’s (directing Naked City, Have Gun Will Travel and The Twilight Zone. Elliot was always an artist’s rights guy. The reason directors have a “director’s cut” or “final cut” is because Elliot fought for it. It’s not hyperbole to say that Elliot Silverstein really is the director’s director.

We first met Elliot back during our Tales From The Crypt days. Elliot directed four episodes including one of the series’ best – “The Reluctant Vampire”. It’s about a vampire who doesn’t like hurting people so he gets a job as night watchman in a blood bank. Malcolm MacDowell played the vampire.

Having learned to direct during TV’s first Golden Age, Elliot taught himself to see the whole show or movie in his head before he ever calls “Action!”. It made working with him on Crypt a fascinating – and very educational – experience.

We cover a lot of territory in this one. A lot of fascinating characters make appearances: If Elliot’s anything, he’s a kind of Don Quixote tilting at corporate and studio windmills. The word that best defines Elliot at the end of the day: integrity.

Yup – Elliot Silverstein is very much the director’s director.

Photo 1282336 / Movie © James Group Studios, Inc. | Dreamstime.com

There are movie producers and then there’s Joel Silver.

Hollywood’s famous for its larger-than-life personalities. Joel is larger than larger-than-life. Working for Joel can be challenging. Rewarding, too, but challenging especially. There’s not much margin for error but plenty for terror.

In Season One, we told lots of great Joel stories. We’ll re-tell some of them here but with a different context. We’ll tell some new ones too.

There’s the story of Joel directing an episode of “Tales From The Crypt” in between fighting with Gil Adler, the show’s producer because Joel wouldn’t put his cell phone away.

And what about the time Joel tried to fire John Kassir, the voice of the Crypt Keeper?

Or the time Joel crossed into Canada without a single piece of identification and nearly caused an international incident?

We’ll also revisit the Car Ride From Hell and the strange (but very Hollywood) story of how HBO’s short lived series Perversions Of Science came into being.

What makes Joel Silver stories so much fun is that they really can go anywhere because Joel really could do anything. The thing about Joel though is context. You have to appreciate Joel within his context (and not within any sort of real world context). Joel doesn’t exactly live in the real world.

All sorts of odd characters also will appear. Big stars with big egos and even bigger problems. Hustlers and wannabes. We’ve even got a Donald Trump story or two! As befits a “Joel-A-Palooza”, we’ve got something for everyone!

A bunch of episodes back (Season Two, Episode 18), we asked “Who’s really the boss on any movie or TV set?” One of the answers: why, it’s the first assistant director, of course! On a TV set, that’s pretty true. There, the first AD works for the producers.

On a movie set, by contrast, the first may be paid by the producers, but, in their mind, they work for the director.  

Meet Leigh Webb

Leigh Webb was a first AD for three seasons of Tales From The Crypt – seasons three through six – and for Demon Knight. So, mostly, he worked for us – Crypt’s producers.

Pretty much everyone who worked on Crypt felt the same way about doing the show. It was special. Really, really special. Leigh is no different.

As I’ve said before, one of the great benefits of doing this podcast and having deep, nuts-n-bolts conversations with friends and co-workers is that I get to learn so much more about my friends and co-workers. They’re even more amazing than I thought they were.

Leigh Webb checks every one of those boxes. His own story is as compelling as any Crypt episode. Leigh acted in the Partridge Family and The Waltons. For three years, he drove an ambulance – which turned out to be his vehicle back into show biz and – eventually – into becoming a first.

What’s more? Leigh’s a great storyteller!

Along the way, we’ll dish on big names. There’ll be love for Tom Hanks. Not so much love for Don Johnson. We’ll talk about working with John Frankenheimer, Raul Julia, John Lithgow, Isabella Rossellini and Tobe Hooper. Yes – more Tobe Hooper stories!

And Leigh will talk about his passion for skydiving. While Leigh worked on Crypt, I very nearly took up his offer to teach me. He can be very persuasive. Alas, Leigh had to quit skydiving recently – just shy of four thousand jumps. He’ll also talk about his current gig as a City Councilor in Franklin, New Hampshire (it’s Daniel Webster’s home town!).

This episode covers a lot of territory and (we’re biased) all of it is glorious!

When Leigh was in the biz, he was boss on every set he worked on.

This week’s guest on the podcast is a world famous character actor who works all over the world in TV, film and video games from Thailand to South Africa to Berlin to Israel to good ol’ Los Angeles. Mark Ivanir works everywhere in between, too.

Movies! TV! Video Games!

Among Mark’s feature films – Schindler’s List, The Good Shepherd, The Terminal, Undisputed, 7 Days In Entebbe. On TV, he’s been in Babylon Berlin, Barry, Homeland and a kajillion other shows. Same goes for video games. If you’ve ever played Call Of Duty, you’ve fought alongside Mark. Or fought against him.

Mark’s Story

Mark’s own story is as fascinating as any show he’s been in. He was born in the Soviet Union. Well, in part of the USSR we now call Ukraine. His family migrated to Israel when Mark was seven. Like most Israelis, Mark served in the military. In his case, he served in an intelligence unit of the IDF (the Israeli Defense Force).

Mark’s unit took part in “Operation Moses”, a secret operation wherein the Mossad helped the Black Jews of Ethiopia – the Bet Israel – escape refugee camps in the Sudan for Israel. The Bet Israel’s story could be a TV series unto itself. Ironically, Mark would later end up acting (as the Mossad’s chief) in a movie – The Red Sea Diving Resort – about that very military operation!

Eventually, Mark found his way into the theatre world in Tel Aviv. Steven Spielberg hired Mark after his wife Kate Capshaw saw Mark’s face whizzing by on a video tape.

Robert DeNiro hired Mark for a very tough part in “The Good Shepherd”. We’ve got a piece of Mark’s performance here in the podcast (check out our YouTube channel!). Mark’s work is haunting!

Mark also worked with Philip Seymour Hoffman, Christopher Walken and Katherine Keener on The Last Quartet. He tells a great story about taking a cigarette break one day in Toronto with Hoffman and Walken and what happened when a fan rolled up.

On TV, it’s hard to find a show Mark hasn’t done. We’ll talk about his work in Israeli TV (and the golden age it’s enjoying), on Homeland and as twin assassins on HBO’s Barry.

Who’s That Guy?

By the time you get to the end of this episode, you won’t have to wonder anymore “who that guy is” – the familiar one you’ve seen a thousand different times.

You’ll know who he is and his name: Mark Ivanir!

For a film buff, Malcolm McDowell is a kind of movie god.

He played Alex Delarge, “hero” of Stanley Kubrick’s masterpiece “Clockwork Orange”. Most critics agree: Clockwork is one of the hundred best movies ever made. Malcolm’s portrayal of Alex is iconic. So are the stories from behind the scenes. Kubrick wasn’t known for being warm and fuzzy with actors. He kinda saw them as useful cogs in his master vision. What was it like working with and for Kubrick? Malcolm will discuss!

Malcolm also appeared in what is arguably the best example ever of “how NOT to make a movie” – The Bob Guccionne-produced catastrophe “Caligula”. Peter O’Toole, Helen Mirren and John Gielgud all believed Caligula was going to be a serious movie made by serious film makers. No one expected Bob Guccione to cut a porno movie into their historical drama.

“Caligula” might be an even better example of how NOT to make a movie than Bordello Of Blood.

We’ll talk to Malcolm about “If…” the Lindsay Anderson master work that both introduced Malcolm to cinema and got him the Alex Delarge role. As Kubrick said when he saw Malcolm’s entrance in “If…”, “We’ve found our Alex!” On the one hand, getting the role of a lifetime early in his career helped make Malcolm’s career. On the other, playing Alex typecast Malcolm. He got few leading men parts (other than Time After Time) but plenty of villains.

He played Sauron in Star Trek: Generations – that’s the guy who killed Captain James T. Kirk! You don’t get more villainous than that. Of course, we’ll talk also about Tales From The Crypt. Malcolm appeared in “The Reulctant Vampire”, one of Crypt’s most beloved episodes.

Malcolm McDowell is truly iconic. The good news is he’s finally found a modicum of peace with the role that made him.

Filmmaker, video editor and documentarian Roger Nygard knows practically everything important that there is to know. Seriously, It all started with “Trekkies”, Roger’s first documentary.

With “Trekkies”, his celebration of “Star Trek” fans, Roger created the fan documentary. What made it easy was that Roger himself was a fan of the series. And a fan of movies. Roger grew up in Minnesota and migrated west alongside a self proclaimed Minnesota Mafia “ice pack”. We’ll talk about their odd Minnesotan sense of humor. Think the Coen Brothers – Joel and Ethan – and movies like “Fargo”.

Roger’s story of breaking into show biz – and staying there – is revelatory. Like a lot of Roger’s documentaries, it’s instructive, too!

Want to know the secret of life? Roger knows it (he talked to dozens of experts, religious leaders, followers and philosophers to get that secret – and he’ll share it with you!

How about the secret to having a great relationship with your significant other? Roger knows that one, too – and he’ll share it!

Roger also shares the secret to making things funny and to making funny things funnier. Something to do with “faster”.

These days, Roger edits “Curb Your Enthusiasm” (he’s also edited and/or directed shows like “The Office” and “Veep”, “Grey’s Anatomy” and “The Bernie Mac Show”. He’s got a few more documentaries up his sleeve, too.

You might not sit down to this podcast expecting to walk away with the secrets to life and better relationships, but that’s exactly what you’re going to get! Because Roger Nygard knows practically everything!

You might not know John Harrison’s name (though you should!). John’s written, directed, produced or written the score for some pretty big projects including Dinosaur, Creepshow (and Creepshow 2), Tales From The Darkside, the original Day Of The Dead and the 2000 TV version of Dune. John cut his movie-making teeth working for horror maestro (and inventor of the modern zombie movie) George Romero. If he wasn’t writing for Romero, he was acting for him or composing the music. Or working on the set as 1^st AD.

John then became a rock solid director in his own right.

But, along the way – there are great stories. Like the time John did a last minute zombie scene as a favor to Romero. After doing a bloody screwdriver-to-the-ear gag, John (who was making commercials back then) headed to meet with a client – without fully de-zombifying.

We’ll all trade stories about making the short-lived Wes Craven anthology Nightmare Café. And, of course, we’ll talk about “Tales From The Crypt”. John wrote four episodes and directed two (including “The Pit” which starred Wayne Newton).

After several Creepshow features and the Tales From The Darkside series, John directed the 2000 six hour TV version of “Dune” for Sci-Fi. In our conversation, John will compare and contrast his version of “Dune” with David Lynch’s version and the current Villeneuve version.

Finally, the three of us will talk a little screenwriting craft. If there’s a secret to writing great screenplays, it’s here.

You’d have to be a zombie – several times over – not to have a blast with John Harrison and this episode. Zombie Apocalypse? Why, yes please! Make ours a double!

Photo 68275731 / Zombie Apocalypse © Hgabric | Dreamstime.com

Bill Malone fell in love with Robby The Robot the moment Robby entered the classic sci fi movie “Forbidden Planet“. Characters like Robby and the Creature From The Black Lagoon completely captivated Bill. They piqued something deep inside him. Like a lot of burgeoning movie-makers, Bill spent time with a super 8 movie camera as a kid. In Bill’s case, that love led him into a career making movies. It also gave him the chance to actually own the character that helped inspire that love: Robby The Robot!

Bill’s one of those great storytellers whose own story is pretty damned compelling. He’s been to some very cool places at some very cool times. He was backstage with a press pass at the Monterey Pop Festival, appeared as Beatle George Harrison in a feature film, designed the face mask that became THE original Michael Meyers mask, and he directed feature films and TV shows including one of the very best episodes of Tales From The Crypt ever!

We will do a deep dive into “Only Skin Deep”. It might just be Bill’s masterpiece!

Ah, but Hollywood’s fickle. Bill’s also experienced more than a few setbacks, too. Bad luck has found Bill directing several examples of how NOT to make a movie. That includes a TV movie we all did together for Fox – W.E.I.R.D World. Bill feels it’s the weakest thing he ever did. We’ll discuss!

We’ll also discuss Freddy’s Nightmares (the “Nightmare On Elm Street” TV series – we all worked on it), Masters of Horror, The House On Haunted Hill and everything else on Bill’s mind. Hell, because he worked for Joel Silver (Bill directed “The House On Haunted Hill” for Joel and Bob Zemeckis’ Cark Castle Pictures), Bill’s got Joel stories, too!

In our case, nothing’s forbidden!

Like happy endings. We’ll talk about how Bill’s passion for movies paid off in the end (to the tune of 5.38 million bucks!).

In the Star Trek universe, there’s the Prime Directive. In the acting universe, there’s the Primus Directive!

Barry Primus can do it all: write, direct, act, sing and dance. He came up through the New York theater world where huge talents like Anna Sokolow, Jerome Robbins and Jose Quintero took a young Barry under their wings. When he segued into movies, directors like Martin Scorsese, Elia Kazan and Martin Ritt hired Barry.

This one’s pretty free-ranging. We talk about the craft of acting and the crap that was the McCarthy Hearings. There are great stories about Zero Mostel, Christopher Walken, David Carradine, Eli Wallach, Martin Balsam and quite a few concerning Barry’s good friend Robert DeNiro.

Donald Trump even gets a mention (Barry wrote a startlingly prescient line about Trump for “Mistress”, a terrific movie that Barry also produced and directed.

And we even get a visit from Barry’s wife, dancer and choreographer Julie Aranel (among her many credits, she choreographed the original Broadway production of “Hair”).

In addition to everything else, Barry’s a highly respected acting teacher whose taught acting all over the world. This one really covers a lot of territory!

So, what is the Primus Directive? Simple: Live! Act! Love!

Sounds like a plan!

Consider this a Tales From The Crypt reunion show! Rick Bota went aboard Crypt season three – same as Gil and Alan. Over the years, Rick was director of photography on twenty episodes (including some of the best including William Friedkin’s “On A Dead Man’s Chest”) and the first Crypt feature film “Demon Knight“. But, Rick also DP’d the Crypt Keeper segments that started and finished every episode. In fact, Rick also directed a few – one of only three people to ever have that relationship with our franchise player.

As Gil and Rick discuss, a lot of thought and effort and hard work went into each and every segment.

Rick went on to DP and or direct some interesting movies: Barb Wire with Pamela Anderson and entries six, seven and eight of the Hellraiser film franchise. Barb Wire is kind of a notorious failure (nothing to do with Rick’s excellent work). Rick reinvigorated the Hellraiser franchise when he took it over.

How To Shoot The Crypt Keeper

But, mostly we’ll talk Tales From The Crypt, how to shoot a Crypt Keeper segment and the joys of just being on that show. We got to work with the most amazing people (like the aforementioned “Exorcist” and “French Connection” director William Friedkin). In fact, Rick has a not merely a good Billy Friedkin story but a great one!

As we made Tales From The Crypt 30 years ago, we didn’t have the luxury of CGI. The one time we did get a little fancy was on Bob Zemeckis’ episode “You, Murderer” which starred John Lithgow, Isabella Rossellini and Humphrey Bogart. Rick also DP’d that one. We didn’t realize it at the time, but we were living in the movie and TV stone age.

Yeah, Rick Bota shot the Crypt Keeper all right – and the Crypt Keeper loved every second of it!

In this episode, we’ll be singing “Chattanooga Choo Choo” because this year’s Chattanooga Film Festival is going to be singing “Tales From The Crypt”, “Bordello of Blood” and “The How NOT To Make A Movie Podcast“!

Gil and Alan will be IN Chattanooga from June 23 – 25 as part of this year’s live events. The film festival will continue in a virtual format from June 26 – June 29. The CFF is ten years old and thrilled to have a live component again (their first time going live after the pandemic). This year, they’ll be showing (and in many cases premiering) 40+ feature films and 30+ shorts. They describe this year’s lineup as a “cinema tsunami”!

The Chattanooga Film Festival prides itself on being an odd duck among film festivals. They’ve always leaned toward the strange and horrific. Especially the horrific – which is why they reached out to us. Cos strange and horrific!

Crypt Again!

Here’s a strange thing: we produced “Tales From The Crypt” about 30 years after the EC comics had had their run. The CFF is celebrating Crypt as the audience rediscovers about 30 years after we stopped producing Crypt. It must be time for Crypt again!

Join us in Chattanooga – or virtually if getting to Chattanooga just ain’t in the cards. We’ll be hosting another table read of “Dead Easy” (the movie we were supposed to make instead of “Bordello Of Blood”), with well known genre actors playing the roles.

We’ll screen Bordello at the CFF – with Gil and Alan watching it together for the first time and doing a live commentary – and meet with a local Veterans group to talk about movie-making.

Finally, we’ll do a live version of the podcast where we’ll take questions from the audience.

We also discuss the ongoing writers strike – a subject that strikes home (as it were). So, join us as we Chattanooga Choo Choo Crypt and Crypt again!

One of our big themes on this podcast is what happens when talented movie makers lose their minds… or their taste… or control over their movies.

You get a “Bordello of Blood” when big name, talented people make a movie none of them really wants to make. Plus an insane producer.

Caligula had the opposite problem – but with an insane producer.

Every big name that made Caligula wanted to make the movie and for almost entirely artistic reasons. Gore Vidal – the screenplay’s original author – had a clear vision for what he wanted…

Caligula’s original director – Tinto Brass – also had a clear vision. Problem was, his vision for the movie didn’t match Gore Vidal’s.

Or Bob Guccione’s.  And Bob Guccione’s vision mattered more than anyone’s. That’s because all the money was his.

A Spectacular… Fiasco

The result is a spectacular fiasco. It’s not just bad, it’s epically bad. Almost unwatchably bad. That’s harder to pull off than it looks. And I know from experience!

Caligula calls itself the most controversial film of all time. It might be right.

It’s not an easy movie to sit through. That’s regardless of which of the various cuts you watch. For clarity’s sake, I watched the uncut edition. It clocks in at 156 minutes.

A hundred-fifty-six ENDLESS minutes. And if I never see another naked body so long as I live, I’ll die happy. That’s one of the movie’s odd effects. There’s constant nudity. Fairly constant hardcore sex. And yet it never feels sensual or erotic or even remotely sexy.

The producer in me keeps shouting at it “No, no, no! Nudity doesn’t work here! It isn’t needed! Why are these people naked?”

Can Movie Nudity Be Oppressive?

To be honest, I find Caligula’s  nudity downright oppressive. And inexplicable. In fact, the whole movie feels ill at ease. Like it knows it’s going places it shouldn’t.

A lot of people have thought about this movie and why it is the way it is. They’ve written books and shorts and academic papers on the subject.

Most of the criticism has landed squarely on Bob Guccione. Rightfully so. This movie is pretty much what Guccione wanted it to be. But,  “Caligula” wasn’t his first time at the movie-making rodeo.

In fact, Guccione had helped finance quite a few movies: Chinatown… The Longest Yard… Day Of The Locust.

The man had solid cinematic taste. He had a dream, too.

In an interview he gave to Penthouse – his own magazine – Guccione stated “I certainly didn’t set out to make a pornographic movie”. But then he says “it’s a question of definitions”. To him, porno was “a work of bad art as opposed to good art”.

Guccione wanted to make a “serious statement” with Caligula. His final word: “We’ve done with cinematic images what so many authors and historians have done with words”.

When Guccione says “we”, he means “he”. Guccione paid for Caligula all by himself. Every penny i...

Our friend Ernest Dickerson is both a first rate director of photography and a first rate director. He shot all of Spike Lee‘s early movies – everything from Joe’s Bed-Stuy Barbershop (Spike’s film school dissertation) and “She’s Gotta Have It” to “School Daze” and “Jungle Fever” to “Do The Right Thing” and “Malcolm X“. Then Ernest became a director, starting his directing career with the terrific “Juice“.

Eventually we crossed paths with Ernest – when he agreed to direct the first “Tales From The Crypt” feature film, “Demon Knight“. DK, unlike its sequel “Bordello Of Blood“, has become a horror movie classic, much beloved by a world-wide audience.

We’ll talk about making DK together – and Ernest’s road before then. Working with Spike has produced some great stories. So did working with Tupac Shakur on his first movie (and Ernest’s as director), “Juice”.

Ernest has also made a lot of great TV. He’s directed practically every show on TV and multiple episodes of shows like “The Wire”, “Walking Dead”, “Dexter” and “Bosch”.

As a director and DP, Ernest is the juice. We feel the same way about sitting down with Ernest. It’s all juice.

Kevin J. Anderson is a writing superman. He’s actually written Superman, too – Kevin wrote the novels “The Last Days Of Krypton” and “Enemies & Allies“. Kevin’s also written books in the Star Wars world, the X-Files world and, perhaps most famously, together with Brian Herbert, the Dune world. In fact, Kevin is incredibly successful. Over his career, he’s published over 140 books, over 50 of which have been on US and international bestseller lists, and he has more than 23 million books in print worldwide! See what we mean?

A writing superman!

While Kevin’s origins are more humble than Krypton. He hails from a small town in Wisconsin he calls “Half Norman Rockwell, half Norman Bates”. He hit the ground a sci-fi nerd and a voracious reader. But Kevin has something else onboard, too. Writing discipline.

We’ll talk a lot about the craft of writing in this episode. Where do ideas come from – and what’s the best way to get them from inside your head to some medium other people can use to experience it? These are both challenging times to be a writer, but also times of great opportunity. Kevin discusses how to take advantage of those opportunities.

As Kevin will describe, he’s a “dictator”. After thoroughly outlining a project, Kevin writes using a digital recorder. He speaks the words rather than typing them. And, he says, what he dictates is often close to the final draft (with some minor tweaking).

Maybe even more important that the writing itself, Kevin discusses the business of writing. He’s Director of the Master of Arts in Creative Writing, Publishing Concentration for Western Colorado University’s School of Graduate Studies. Back when, writers all had to rely on big publishing houses to make a living. These days (with fewer publishing houses out there), writers really do need to rely on themselves.

And that’s where being a real “superman” helps a ton.

One last thing! We highly recommend a book Kevin and his Wordfire Press published – our friend John Harrison’s terrific psychological thriller “Passing Through Veils“. Think Shirley Jackson meets Gillian Flynn!

You’re welcome!

We are beyond honored that the Chattanooga Film Festival wants to honor “Tales From The Crypt”, “Bordello Of Blood” and this very podcast – “The How NOT To Make A Movie Podcast” at this year’s festival which starts THIS WEEKEND and runs from June 23 – June 29.

The opening weekend – the 23 – 25 will be IRL – In Real Life! The rest of the festival will run virtually.

While it may be a little late to get yourself to Chattanooga, you can still make it to the festival – and they’ve got a great slate of films and events scheduled this year! Check it all out at chattfilmfest.org!

That should be “Lighting In A Bottle – At the Chattanooga Film Festival“. That’s where we just spent the weekend – being feted (not fetid) because of “Tales From The Crypt“, “Bordello Of Blood” and this, our “How NOT To Make A Movie Podcast“.

So, before we start, thank you, Chattanooga Film Festival & Chattanooga & The Read House!

First of all, neither Gil nor I had ever been to Chattanooga. Gil has been to Nashville a couple of times but that’s as close as either of us had ever been to Chattanooga. Until now. It’s a charming city loaded with history (lots from the Civil War – a subject that fascinates me). The hotel where the CFF held most of their IRL events (the live ones versus the virtual ones) was The Read House – an historical hotel that dates back to 1872 (and before that to another hotel that stood on the same site).

The Read House has hosted lots of celebrities. Everyone from Al Capone to Elvis and Ronald Reagan. It’s a beautiful hotel. Recent renovations focused on the hotel’s history.

The festival itself also is worth tuning in for – it’s still ongoing (albeit in virtual form for the duration). Gil and I both saw some great movies and shorts from all over the world. The festival focuses on the creepier side. We’ll be chatting with a few of these terrific film makers in podcasts to come!

But this event was all about Tales – and capturing lighting in a bottle – and what happens when you forget to hold tightly to the jar’s lid. Lightning never sits quietly in that jar.

Want to have a  G R E A T weekend? Spend it being feted by the incredible folks (led by Chris Dortch) at the Chattanooga Film Festival. Nothing beats good people treating you like a couple of hot shots. We hope we gave half as good as we got!

The Chattanooga Film Festival (named one of the 25 coolest film festivals in the world by Movie Maker Magazine) focuses on the really offbeat – with a particular bent toward horror. That’s why the CFF’s especially special in our hearts!

This year, in addition to celebrating a fantastic collection of shorts and feature films, the CFF celebrated Tales From The Crypt, Bordello Of Blood, us and this very podcast! An honor and a thrill, everybody!

Last episode, we broadcast our session in front of a live film festival audience, talking smack and taking questions.

In this episode, we want to tell you how it actually was on the ground in Chattanooga. We’ll dish about everything – from the wonderful accommodations at the Read House Hotel (also the CFF’s base) to the food to lots and lots of the movies being celebrated.

Spoiler Alert: there was plenty to celebrate.

Ably assisting us all along the way were our producing partners, the Dads From The Crypt. While dad Jason Stein attended the CFF virtually, dads Jody Webster and Armando “Mando” Aguilar got to attend in the flesh.

We’ll compare notes with everyone!

And, finally, if you have a few bucks banging around in your pocket needing a good cause, please consider tossing a few to the Chattanooga Film Festival. While they have paying sponsors, those sponsors don’t cover the full fare. This labor of love deserves our love. Here’s where you can donate to this very worthy, creative cause.

While you can’t play anything at the CFF’s website, it’s still chock-a-block with good information! As we said, this was a great, small-scale-but-giant-heart film festival that deserves to thrive (and not just because they celebrated us).

In the episodes ahead, we’ll bore in on some of the films we saw. And we’ll bore in on the terrific filmmakers who made them.

Yeah, that wasn’t a good weekend in Chattanooga, it was a G R E A T one! Hot shots for the hot shots!

Conventional wisdom says comedy is hard. It is for some people. Hell, for some people (the ones without a sense of humor – not everyone has one, ya know!), comedy is downright impossible. For the rest of us though, comedy isn’t all that hard. And it gets easier the more honest we are. Phyllis Katz (of the Chicago Katz’s) teaches people how to reach that inner-most place where comedy lives and breathes. How to “make em laugh” as it were. She was one of the founders of the Groundlings School. And The Groundlings is one of the preeminent training grounds for great comedic talent.

Gary Austin started The Groundlings in 1974 in Los Angeles. He’d been part of the improv group The Committee up in San Francisco. The Committee had been formed by alums of Chicago’s The Second City – truly the mother of all improv.

Meet Phyllis Katz

Phyllis compares improv to jazz. The creative process is similar. It requires a completely open mind, great hearing and the willingness to go anywhere the spirit takes you.

As creative outlets go, improv checks off a particular set of boxes. It’s not about joke-writing or even going for the joke. It’s about character – about quickly and deftly finding the physical attributes and personality quirks that define a character and the world they inhabit. Few things inspire the wild laughter that happens when an audience grasps the abstract ideas inside another person’s head. A completely imaginary world suddenly springs vividly to life – and a whole audience is delighted that they’re in on the joke!

Improv epitomizes the collaborative process. Everyone must be on the same page for the enterprise to work. “Yes, and…” is improv’s operating principle. It’s the operating principle of every creative endeavor.

In this episode, our guest Phyllis Katz will give us deep insight into how The Groundlings came to be – and how they’ve put their imprint on American comedy for a generation.

The Cavalcade

Want proof? Here are but a few of their graduates (and by “graduates”, we mean, the survivors of a rigorous, highly competitive, multi-year training and culling process) –

Will Forte

Heidi Gardner

Anna Gesteyer

Kathie Griffin

Phil Hartman

Cheryl Hines

Jan Hooks

Chris Kattan

Lisa Kudrow

Phil LaMar

John Lovitz

Melissa McCarthy

Edie McClurg

Pat Morita

Larraine Newman

Cheri Oteri

Cassandra Peterson

Paul Reubens

Maya Rudolph

Mindy Sterling

Julia Sweeney

Kristin Wiig

Is Comedy Hard? Depends…

Some incredibly talented people crashed out before making the main company. Alan is one of them! Those people could write volumes about how comedy is hard. Some have…

On the plus side? Listening or watching this episode isn’t hard at all! The best thing about comedy is that enjoying it isn’t nearly as challenging as creating it.

LINKS:

Hipwrecked – Phyllis’s book about her adventure in medical tourism – can be found

We “met” Francisco Lacerda – a very, very talented Portuguese-American moviemaker – at this year’s Chattanooga Film Festival. That is, we met a short Francisco made called “They call it… Red Cemetery“. Red Cemetery is both an homage to Sergio Leone and his brand of exploitation moviemaking and a statement of moviemaking talent all by itself. We’d even call what Francisco’s got “killer talent”.

He’s got a very real talent for killing people. On film/video.

Like a lot of young film makers (from outside Hollywood), Francisco has had to find his own way (and find the money to make his movies). He’s struggled with crowd-sourcing (and he’ll talk about his troubles) and even with his own (Portuguese) government. The establishment film community in Portugal is pretty staid, reserved and unimaginative.

At least, they were. Francisco sees hopeful signs of change. Self-described horror movies are starting to find acceptance (and officially-sanctioned financing). Francisco has also found a home in the Troma-verse (some of his work can be found on Troma’s YouTube channel.

We’ll also pick at the early horror movie “wounds” – the ones that inspired Francisco’s own movie-making dreams and ambitions. Especially important to Francisco’s creative evolution: “Alien”. We will do a deep dive into how “Alien” helped shape Francisco’s vision and aspirations.

We compare Francisco to early Sam Raimi or early John Waters. Their early work pushed the envelope repeatedly but always with a big dose of irony. It’s what helped make them both the killer talents they became.

We really enjoyed meeting Francisco and we think you will, too. We’re dead certain that you’ll enjoy Francisco’s work, too.

You can find some at of Francisco’s work at the Troma YouTube Channel.

Over the course of 5 seasons, Gil & Alan produced 69 episodes of “Tales From The Crypt”. That’s out of 93 episodes total over its full 7 year run. While we’ve said many times that doing Crypt was like catching lightning in a bottle, not every day was fun. And while we take pride in every episode we made, there are episodes we take greater pride in. And episodes where it’s more “pride by association”. Like any relationship, it’s love-hate.

Fortunately, doing Crypt, it was mostly love.

There are lots of episodes where we like the finished product but loved working with whoever made it with us. That really was a big part of the lightning – the actors and directors who dropped in for an episode. And always there were stories. We talk about working with TIM CURRY, KIRK DOUGLAS, CHRISTOPHER REEVE, WHOOPI GOLDBERG and TOBE HOOPER.

And then we tell TOM HANKS stories and RITA WILSON stories, And some pretty good stories about WILLIAM FRIEDKIN, BUCK HENRY, JOE PESCI, JOEY PANTOLIANO. Joey once gave Alan a literal hair cut. We have Polaroid photos as proof!

And we pay our respects to MANNY COTO. Manny was a super-talented writer-director-producer who wrote and directed the “MOURNIN’ MESS” episode – one of our best. Manny was huge in TV. Among his credits: he ran American Horror Story and 24. Manny just passed away; we send his family, friends and loved ones our deepest condolences.

We’ll also dig into why we feel less charitable toward certain episodes and directors. Gil tells a great (and revealing) story about legendary movie director JOHN FRANKENHEIMER and what happened when he directed an episode of Crypt.  

We’ll also tell a few JOEL SILVER stories because – how can we not? Gil still carries around scars from the episode Joel “directed”.

Run for your lives! The world is over-run with Alan Katz’s – and Allan Katz’s and Allen Katz’s! That’s what it feels like anyway (to the Alan Katz who hosts this podcast and writes these posts!).

In this episode of The How NOT To Make A Movie Podcast, Alan Katz finally has a conversation he’s waited almost 40 years to have – with Allan Katz – the person he always thought of as “the other Allan Katz”.

Turns out, Alan Katz (this podcast’s co-host) is actually the “other Alan”.

Sharing a name with other people is hardly rare. It sucks nonetheless because it can create all kinds of chaos and confusion. Sharing a name can cost you work and cause really embarrassing situations.

It can make you nuts, frankly.

Other Alan, Allan & Allen’s

Alan has always had to share his space with other people with the same name. He went to Camp Skylemar sleepaway camp in Maine for six years – and, for four of them, he shared a cabin with a kid named Allan Katz. That Allan Katz was a twin. His brother Howie Katz also was in the cabin.

One of Alan’s school friends, Kenny Katz? His dad, “Allen Katz”, owned a bunch of fast food restaurants when they were all kids.

When Alan Katz arrived in LA in 1985, he bumped into the (unfortunate for him) fact that another guy with the same name – Allan Katz – had set up shop in television long before and made quite a name for himself. Studio execs mistook Alan for Allan on numerous occasions. In fact, on more than one occasion, Alan received Allan’s residual checks. They were damned impressive.

Alan sent them all back to the Writers’ Guild of course.

Allan Katz, Meet Allan Katz

In SAG (the Screen Actor’s Guild), no two people can have the same name. It turns out? Before Allan Katz went to join SAG, there already was an Allan Katz – so Allan (the one we’re talking about – see how confusing it can get?) couldn’t use his own name (when he made the comedy feature film “Big Man On Campus” – originally entitled “The Hunchback Of UCLA”). Instead, he got approval for – and went by – “Starring Allan Katz”.

Along the way, Allan (the one who got to Hollywood first), will talk about being an ad writer in Chicago (where he created the hugely successful ad campaign for the SCREAMING YELLOW ZONKERS brand of snack food. GEORGE SCHLATTER – a big TV producer about to launch “Laugh-In” saw Allan’s work on the Zonkers ad, and invited him to join Laugh-In’s writing staff (as its youngest member). Bonus cool fact: there was also a young, Canadian writer on that staff named LORNE MICHAELS. He went on to create a little franchise called “Saturday Night Live”.

Allan Katz: Quite The Resume

From there, Allan went on to write episodes for some of the most iconic shows on American TV: “All In The Family”. “Sanford & Son”, “The Mary Tyler Moore Show” and MASH. In time, Allan would go on to write and produce “Rhoda”,, “The Cher Show”, “Roseanne” and “Blossom”.

Quite the resume, yes?

There are great stories to go along with every bit of it.

In the end, through perseverance, luck and a pinch of talent, Alan found his way onto the Show Biz Mountain. But, he’s always wanted to have a chat with “the other Allan Katz” so...

Odds are you’re here, reading this because you love “Tales From The Crypt” and its iconic Crypt Keeper character. We don’t blame you.; we love both of them, too!

We started this season (some 48 episodes ago) with a conversation that had never been had before about how exactly The Crypt Keeper came to be. He didn’t just drop from the sky “as is”.

Actually, it took the work of four different people to create him.

How To Make A Crypt Keeper

First, there was Kevin Yagher – the guy who created the puppet and all its animatronic bits and pieces.

Then actor John Kassir gave the Crypt Keeper its amazing voice. And that laugh. Wanna know where it came from? John will tell that story!

But, if you watch or listen to a Crypt Keeper segment from any season one episode and then any season three episode, you’ll notice a huge difference.

From Puppet To “Playah”

Lots of huge differences. That’s when Gil and I stepped in and took over writing and producing Crypt.

Among the changes we made to the show – in addition to getting the budget back under control and going after the biggest stars we could get – like Michael J. Fox and Kirk Douglas – we took the show back to its EC Comics roots as ironic, gleefully warped morality tales.

We also reimagined the Crypt Keeper and gave him a rich, interior life. We turned him from a scary puppet into a franchise. While I handled all the writing chores, Gil produced all the Crypt Keeper segments and directed a lot of them – including the Crypt Keeper segments in both Crypt feature films.

The truth is, if you take any of those four people out of this equation? There’s no equation – and we’re not having this conversation.

How do you make an iconic character that will stand the test of time? Well, there’s no book telling you how to do it. But, there is this episode.

In keeping with this episode’s “confidential” nature, we strip off the bandages and reveal plenty of secrets. How the Crypt Keeper’s whole existence is entirely accidental… how John Kassir created the CK’s iconic laugh… how writing the segments was like being tortured – by the Crypt Keeper… why there’ll probably never be another new episode of Tales From The Crypt.

What surprised all four of us (when we spoke) is how despite knowing that the CK was, is, always will be a puppet, each of us succumbed to his “magic”. That’s the strange thing about iconic characters like the Crypt Keeper.

They really do transcend their world and find a comfy place in ours.

Todd Holland directed one of the best “Tales From The Crypt” episodes – “Top Billing” – about a struggling actor (played by Jon Lovitz) who thinks he’s auditioning for the lead in “Hamlet” at a small theater tucked away in an alley. He’s actually auditioning for the role of “Yorick – the skull”!

This is one of those Crypt episodes that rewards repeat viewing in a “Usual Suspects” kind of way. What seems just “odd” the first time through becomes vital info when you actually realize what you’re looking at. It’s a very layered episode.

Myles Berkowitz’s script created that layering, but Todd’s directing paid off every single layer. After working on Crypt, Todd went on to not only direct but actively helped create or run iconic shows like “Malcolm In The Middle”, “The Larry Sanders Show” and “Wonderfalls” – a wonderful show that suffered a terrible fate. He also directed the cult-favorite movie “The Wizard”.

But, before all that, Todd announced his presence at UCLA Film School where he wrote and produced a funny, terrifying short called “Chicken Thing”. Chicken Thing is what caught Steven Spielberg’s attention – and got Todd a slot in season two of Spielberg’s anthology series “Amazing Stories”.

Another thing “Top Billing” does well – because Todd does it well – is balance comedy with horror. Those two things have more in common than most people think. You need to build them carefully to maximize the payoff. But, if you can maximize their payoff?

You’ll succeed. Then it’ll be a matter of protecting your joy, honing your craft and expanding your network. It’s the only way to defeating any Chicken Things that come your way.

It’s not unusual for long-running TV shows – like HBO’s “Tales From The Crypt” was – to develop a family-like feeling among its regular crew. At Crypt, that feeling got magnified by Crypt’s whole “lightning in a bottle” mystique. As we’ve talked about here at The How NOT To Make A Movie Podcast, Crypt really did go places no TV show had ever gone before. We were the first crossroad where TV and feature films ever tried to work together to create great TV. That’s why we went after – and got – talents like William Friedkin (Billy, to us) to come and direct our show.

Billy died last week (as of this writing). It really does feel like an era ended.

And, frankly, it feels like a death in the family.

Fortunately, since we started this podcast, the Tales From The Crypt family has managed to get together on happy occasions. Alas, today, we get together for a sad one. But, we know, Billy wouldn’t want us being down. He’d want us to celebrate what we all did together – and that’s what we’re going to do!

In this episode, we reminisce about our collective experience working with this iconic, mercurial, driven but deeply collaborative talent. He pushed us all to articulate his vision – and not a one of us regrets it. Coming in and out of the convo (in addition to Gil & Alan) – Randall Thropp (Crypt’s wardrobe supervisor), Todd Masters (Crypt’s make up special effects guru), Sherrie Rose (one of the episode’s actors), Ed Tapia (Gil & Alan’s executive assistant) and Jason Stein (one of the Dad’s From The Crypt – who co-executive produce this podcast).

To mangle Shakespeare, we do not come to bury Billy, we come to praise the hell out of him!

Welcome to our return visit to the Castle Of Horror! Movie producer, director, writer and actor William Castle was one of the very first film makers who saw their own brand – understood what it was – and then bent movie-making toward themselves. Like Alfred Hitchcock – some critics called Castle a poor man’s Hitchcock – Castle understood that he had a brand to begin with – and that brand was, in large part, him.

Castle started in the theater. Even there, he implicitly understood that regardless of what people actually say about you, it’s always better to be talked about than not talked about.  Early in his career, while producing a play about Nazis, he secretly wrecked the theater lobby and painted swastikas all over then insisted that actual Nazis had done the deed.

For the record, Castle got away with it!

Show biz, Castle understood, is a biz, but it’s the biz of show – and he was all about the show. An accomplished director at Columbia Pictures in the 40’s, Castle produced Orson Welles’ “Lady From Shanghai”. Welles was another giant talent who understand branding before branding was a thing. 

Welles rubbed off on Castle; after working with Welles, Castle went full impresario.

Castle didn’t rely on a star cast to put bottoms in movie seats. He relied on himself and his own fertile imagination. Each and every outside-the-box accomplishment put Castle himself front and center. Fortunately, he relished being there.

But, Castle was even more than all that! Throw “great dad” into the mix. Of all Terry Castle’s memories of her dad, that’s the biggest. That he was a great dad.

If you’ve never met William Castle before, you’re in luck!

If you have met him before – even if it was here – you’re still in luck! A return to the Castle Of Horror is absolutely worth your while.

Welcome to the fright of the century – The Grim Reaper v The Crypt Keeper.

It’s not at all unusual for writers and directors to forge long creative bonds with certain actors. Scorsese and De Niro… Hitchcock and James Stewart… Tarantino and Samuel L. Jackson. 

At Tales From The Crypt, we fell in love with a few actors ourselves and worked with them repeatedly. William Sadler arrived at Crypt before we did; he’s in one of the three brilliant episodes that launched the whole series on HBO. They’re the episodes that caused HBO to proclaim it was no longer TV, it was “HBO”!

The Man Who Was Death

In “The Man Who Was Death”, Bill played Niles Talbot, a state executioner who, frankly, loves his job. He loves delivering justice – and proudly stares the people he’s about to kill right in the eye. They’re getting what’s coming to them.

But then, the state where Niles works outlaws capital punishment – putting poor Niles out of a job. Niles continues his work nonetheless – delivering justice regardless of the fact he no longer has the right to. It’s not his job anymore. Just as the law finally catches up with Niles, the state reinstates the death penalty – and Niles will be the first person to sit in the revamped electric chair.

As the Crypt Keeper would say, “Talk about a re-volting development!”

Bill’s awesome in the role. Hey, his work – in part – helped launch one of the most successful TV anthology franchises ever!

What Better Foil?

We loved Bill so much at Crypt that we hired him twice to work with the Crypt Keeper! The first time, Bill played the Grim Reaper character he’d created for the “Bill And Ted” movies. What better foil for the Crypt Keeper?

In our chat with Bill, we go back to Bill’s acting roots and his whole philosophy of acting. We talk Shawshank Redemption (and how that project came about). And, of course, we talk about The Grim Reaper and how Bill took some pretty bold chances to score that iconic role.

We also talk about Mr. Rush – a very cool, overly-caffeinated character we created with Bill for an anthology series that never went anywhere – though we had a blast making the wraparound together. We’ve got plenty of Mr. Rush samples for you!

Who wins this battle between The Grim Reaper and The Crypt Keeper? Why, you do of course!

Here are some cool links for Bill. First, here’s the Colorado Shakespeare Festival Hamlet 1973 Page:

https://internetshakespeare.uvic.ca/Theater/production/stage/1170/index.html

And here’s a link to Bill’s new CD at Bandcamp. It’s really terrific! Give it a listen. Better yet – buy a digital copy. All the proceeds go to charity.

Win-win!

Here at The How NOT To Make A Movie Podcast, we really and truly appreciate our fans. But, also, we appreciate how the fan experience has changed since we started making movies and TV shows back in the stone age. There used to be a lot more distance between us – what we now call “content creators” and “content consumers”. We knew “Tales From The Crypt” had fans but it was much harder for our fans to connect with us – and for us to connect with them.

Then V Now

Back then, we’d go hire a publicist if we wanted to actively reach out to our audience. They’d approach the entertainment news media (like our friends at EW who very kindly called us the Best Film Podcast of 2022!) with a story angle and then (hopefully), the press would put us “out there” for our audience to find. Sure, a purposeful fan could find our production address and reach out to us there, but we were only ever in production six months at a time – and always in different locations. Other than that, if you wanted to reach Crypt – pre-internet – you’d have to go through HBO.

And they weren’t our gatekeepers.

Content Creators & Consumers

These days, because of the internet – and social media especially – there are no gatekeepers. There’s no gate, really. Everyone’s an open book one way or another. Content creators must, first, learn how to correctly brand ourselves – with all the right hash tags – so that we and our audience can quickly find each other.

That’s a big, big difference between then and now. Another big difference? These days, content creators and content consumers are frequently the same people. The technology became such that everyone could produce music and then video and then websites and then podcasts and then TV series and little, independent movies and pretty much everything.

It’s All Napster’s Fault!

In a very real sense, this is all Napster’s fault. Napster started something that – we’ll all understand in hindsight – irreparably broke the entertainment distribution system. They started the whole “peer to peer” way of thinking. What started with music files became everything. In the end, Napster came for the fan experience, too.

That’s something we really and truly appreciate.

Roger Nygard

So does our friend ROGER NYGARD. He sat in with us earlier in Season Two. Roger’s an editor (“Curb Your Enthusiasm”), a documentarian (“The Nature Of Existence”), an author (“Cut To The Monkey“) – and a content creator not afraid of deep diving into difficult subject matter. Why are we here? Does marriage really matter? And why are Star Trek fans such huge fans of Star Trek?

Roger was one of the first people to see the fan experience as something not just weird – and there ain’t anything wrong with being weird – but compellingly empowering.

That’s the bottom line for fan appreciation day! To be fanatical about something (that’s where the word “fan” comes from) is to be passionate about it. Where Crypt and all the other creative work we’ve done is...

JOHN KASSIR – the voice of THE CRYPT KEEPER – discusses the Crypt Keeper’s birthing process. It took FOUR PEOPLE to turn the CK from a great puppet into an iconic character. Are there Crypt Keeper segments the CK’s creators like best? Are there any they hate? There ae no secrets in this Crypt! With guest appearances by WHOOPI GOLDBERG, ARNOLD SCHWARZENEGGAR, ALFRED HITCHCOCK, ELVIS, THE BEATLES, MARLON BRANDO, FORREST GUMP and JOEL SILVER!

Sittin’ In With John Kassir

It’s always a blast to sit in with our friend John.

In S2E1 – along with Kevin Yagher – we all discussed the herky-jerky, entirely serendipitous process that created the iconic Crypt Keeper character from HBO’s iconic TV series “Tales From The Crypt”. How Joel Silver and Kevin first met… then how Kevin auditioned dozens of actors to play the CK’s voice (including some very big names)… And, finally, how Kevin knew John was The Crypt Keeper the moment they met.

How The Crypt Keeper Evolved

In our Spook-tacular, you’ll get to see how the Crypt Keeper evolved from a dour, cowl-wearing creep who spoke very slowly into the fast-talking, pun machine with a whole life beyond hosting “Tales From The Crypt”. And, you’ll get to see/hear that evolution!

This really is a Crypt Keeper Spook-tacular – chock full of Everything Crypt Keeper!

Favorite Crypt Keeper Bits & Pieces

As three of the CK’s four creators, we have our favorites among the 93 Crypt Keeper segments. There’s the CK playing golf and scoring par for the corpse… selling personal “scare’ products on The Home Chopping Network… inviting you to play doctor with him by opening wide and saying “Aaaaaaauuugghhhhhhh!”

The strange thing about working with the CK? Though we all knew he was a puppet? He absolutely came to life inside each of our heads. To us, he’s as real as real can be.

Maybe that’s why, as The Crypt Keeper puts it: “You’re never too cold to rock ‘n roll!”

Would scary movies be as scary without scary scores? Of course not! Our guest NICK PIKE has composed scores for tons of movies and TV shows but SCORING HORROR has always been a sweet spot. Nick wrote the theme for FREDDY’S NIGHTMARES: THE NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET TV SERIES, ten episodes of HBO’s TALES FROM THE CRYPT and lots of scores for STEPHEN KING adaptations, many for his good friend MICK GARRIS (another Crypt alum). Bring on the scares & scores!

Nick’s a great storyteller with music. He’s also a great storyteller with words – and his own story is pretty fascinating. A musical prodigy, Nick’s journey took him from England to South Africa to New York to Los Angeles. Along the way, he joined forces with South African playwright ATHOL FUGARD. In fact, Athol, says Nick, kept him in the music business at a moment when Nick was ready to chuck it all in.

His behind-the-scenes stories of breaking into Hollywood and then keeping his place as a highly respected and sought after composer are great fun. And we’ll sample a few of our favorites among Nick’s scores (on the projects we worked on together).

Why does a good score scare? Because good scores capture emotion like words can’t. We’ll also talk about the current state of musical scoring – which isn’t good. Licensed music is replacing more and more composers.

We go waaaaaaaaay back with Nick. You’ll feel the “old friend” vibe. Nick did Freddy’s Nightmares with us and Haunted Lives and Crypt and lots of other projects. This really is the best kind of family reunion. Hell, Nick’s even got a great JOEL SILVER STORY of his own! And who doesn’t love another great Joel story?

We talk about Nick’s work with MICHAEL JACKSON, BILL MALONE, and a great score Nick wrote for “WHAT TILL THE NEIGHBORS THINK?” an outside-the-box episode of THE OUTER LIMITS that I wrote and produced.

Above all, we’ll talk about how scares & scores come together and make scary movies even scarier.

PAUL ABASCAL went from being a super talented, highly sought-after movie set HAIR STYLIST (he was MEL GIBSON and SLY STALLONE’S hair guy!) to being a super talented MOVIE AND TV DIRECTOR whose very first dramatic directing credit was the “Oil’s Well That Ends Well” episode of “TALES FROM THE CRYPT”. Paul saw hair architecturally. That’s one reason he took to directing so well.

Good directing, like good hair, is all about structure.

Teasing Hair To Teasing Stories

So, how do you go from teasing hair to shooting movies and TV shows? It always helps if you’re observant, eager to learn and capable of thinking outside the box. It helps, too, if you know how to tell a story – and that Paul absolutely does.

The quintessential Hollywood hair stylist character is George in Hal Ashby’s classic “SHAMPOO”. But whereas George was simply riding the wave of his own charisma, Paul approached hair styling with a perfectionist’s drive.

We talk about learning the hair trade from VIDAL SASSOON’S MASTERS (which Paul did), how knowing how to do one actress’s hair exactly the way she wanted it done got Paul hired onto “STAR TREK III: THE SEARCH FOR SPOCK” and into the union (vital if you want to work in Hollywood), how he and Mel Gibson became tight, and how Paul eventually got the Crypt episode that launched his directing career. Then we’ll talk how directing that Crypt episode changed Paul’s life.

Stories With Style

Well, kind of. Paul also tells a great story about handing STEVEN SPIELBERG his Crypt episode while giving Spielberg’s wife KATE CAPSHAW a perm. The payoff’s pretty awesome, too.

We’ll trade MOLLY RINGWALD stories (Paul worked with her on PRETTY IN PINK (which is revered among hair stylists), DICK DONNER and JOEL SILVER stories. Paul will tell his own “How NOT To Make A Movie Story”. He was hired to take over directing the Mel Gibson movie PAYBACK and more or less saved it.

And, finally, Paul tells a story from the DIE HARD set that we hadn’t heard before – about a location shoot in CENTURY CITY, a catering worker who got drunk (and fired for it), a stolen prop machine gun and a visit from the President and his SECRET SERVICE detachment.

By the time we’re done, you’ll feel like you’ve traveled from hair to eternity!

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Experience the fun as TALES FROM THE CRYPT takes over HORRORCON LA. We brought some friends along with us: one of our favorite actors SHERRIE ROSE, makeup special effects maestro TODD MASTERS and TV producer extraordinaire ED TAPIA (back then, Ed was the best assistant any producer ever had!). And meet THE CHIODO BROTHERS! I moderated their panel celebrating the 35th anniversary of their B movie classic KILLER KLOWNS FROM OUTER SPACE.

We  had a monstrously good time meeting fans, signing autographs, taking pictures and just plain hanging out!

Panels, Panels, Panels!

We also did a couple of panels where – How NOT To Make A Movie Podcast-style – we talked about how we soared making Tales From The Crypt and then crashed and burned making Bordello Of Blood.

I also had the pleasure of moderating a panel for the Chiodo Brothers who are celebrating the 35^th anniversary of their cult classic KILLER KLOWNS FROM OUTER SPACE which MGM is about to publish as a computer game.

Bravo, Chiodos – Charles, Steven and Edward!

Way, way, way back in the day, Gil and I had a couple of meetings with the boys where we explored the possibility of working together. We all love blending comedy into our horror.

If you’ve never been to a horror convention, you should! They’re a scary good time!

The Horror Community

There’s a great vibe to them because the horror community is made up of the sweetest people on planet earth.

But there IS something weird about it all.

As you look around, you notice everyone’s dressed up as Freddy Krueger or Jason or Leatherface for instance, but no one EVER dresses up as any of their victims.

Weird, huh? Except it makes total sense!  The monsters are the empowered ones. They have all the fun. Just my opinion, but, I think that’s why horror fans embrace horror so passionately: because it empowers them.

This whole phenomenon began with Star Trek fans – Trekkies – which we talked about right here on the “How NOT To Make a Movie Podcast” with our guest Roger Nygard!

But, back to HORRORCON LA!

Our Crypt Panel

Our Crypt panel consisted of ED TAPIA – NOW a super successful producer in his own right – Ed produces Everyone’s All American for the CW – BUT, BACK THEN the greatest assistant a movie or TV producer could ever have… there was TODD MASTERS – Crypt’s makeup special effects maestro, and SHERRIE ROSE – our most favorite actor. We hired Sherrie three times fer Chrissakes!

While we were waiting to go on, we hung out with Tales From The Crypt alumni and fellow HORRORCON participant, actor KEVIN DILLON!

Finally, it was showtime. Here’s a bit of that first panel. We talked about “Getting naked”…

As Sunday – day two – of the convention dawned, Gil awoke feeling ill and prudently decided to stay home.

That left just me, my son Tristan and Ed Tapia to hold down the fort. I think we did a pretty good job!

Sunday, (Not So) Bloody Sunday

Sunday’s visitors were even nicer than Saturday’s!

I loved getting to have quality face time with everyone!

And – among the people I bumped into and connected w...

Quick! What do TOM CRUISE, FREDDY KRUEGER, DAMIEN (from “THE OMEN”), THE OSCARS and Progressive’s MOTAUR have in common? PATRICK LUMB was their PRODUCTION DESIGNER. Not only is Patrick a remarkable, innovative production designer, he’s a great STORYTELLER, too. And, this episode features some amazing stories from the sets of VALKYRIE, 2006’s THE OMEN and 2010’s NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET reboot.

Gil first met Patrick when he hired Patrick to take over as Valkyrie’s production designer.

Production Designers

Production designers are the people who first visualize what a movie, TV or advertisement world is going to look like. Their eye will touch every aspect of production because everything has to look like it’s part of the same world. PD’s have no control over the story or how the director (and producers) will tell it (which can be maddening at times). PD’s like Patrick hate watching great sets end up on the cutting room floor for reasons having nothing to do with them.

Patrick never set out to be a production designer. He thought he’d grow up to be a painter. His story is a kind of “Odyssey” that led Patrick to a remarkable life.

We cover everything from soccer (Patrick’s a MANCHESTER UNITED supporter) to what it’s like living in Italy (Patrick lives in the beautiful, historic Tuscan town LUCCA, Italy). JAMES BOND was Patrick’s gateway drug to movies. He got the medium’s awe and power. He still experiences “pinch me” moments where he gets a little giddy about what he’s doing (and who with).

Ads We Actually LIKE!

But, for our money, Patrick’s production design work for advertising clients like PROGRESSIVE INSURANCE, GEICO, TOYOTA, CHIK-FIL-A, ALLSTATE and GE is the coolest part of his production design oeuvre.

Check out his portfolio here. While there, don’t miss the mind-blowing installation he PD’d for the Toyota PRIUS!

Patrick’s a perfect example of how one artist’s vision spreads out across the whole media spectrum.

Among Hollywood producers, CHRIS BOARDMAN is famous for being one of those very rare musicians who can write literally anything. Over his extraordinary career, he has written literally everything. His orchestrating/composing credits include THE COLOR PURPLE, THE WIZ, DIE HARD, LETHAL WEAPON, WATERWORLD, OUTBREAK, TOMMY BOY, PAYBACK, SPY KIDS and BORDELLO OF BLOOD. Chris has also lent his talents to musical acts like JULIE ANDREWS and co-founded the band WISHFUL THINKING. He really is an all around MUSIC MAN!

In this one, we talk a lot about music itself and the process of making music work alongside visual elements. As an orchestrator, Chris’s job is to take the film’s score and pump it full of orchestral life. To exploit every last bit of music’s emotional richness.

And, Chris has stories! Among the names dropped in this episode (with great stories to boot): MILES DAVIS, QUINCY JONES, MICHAEL KAMEN, TOTO (the band) and MEL GIBSON.

Chris also talks about a subject almost as near and dear as music: teaching. Chris is a phenomenal teacher and mentor. But then, look at the talented people who mentored Chris along his way. We’ll also talk about Chris’s work on an app that could be instrumental in suicide prevention. It uses music (tempo and tone especially) as a therapeutic to sonically alter suicidal thought processes. It works equally well on anxiety, depression and PTSD (it worked on Chris’s!). It’s fascinating – worth a listen – and worth some investment dollars, too!

Talking to Chris is not unlike listening to a Wishful Thinking cut. It’s smooth and flowing and, before you know it? The song’s over and you still want more. That’s music, man.

Yeah – that’s music!

Like us, KRISTEN LOPEZ is passionate about movies (she’s a huuuuuge VERONICA LAKE fan). She’s passionate about the MOVIE BUSINESS, too. An ENTERTAINMENT JOURNALIST, she’s been THE WRAP’s FILM EDITOR since 2022. She created and co-hosts a great podcast called TICKLISH BUSINESS and wrote “BUT HAVE YOU READ THE BOOK: 52 Literary Gems That Inspired Our Favorite Films” where all of Kristen’s passion, considerable talent and delightfully puckish point of view – are on full display.

Kristen’s also an ardent advocate for disabled people. Her own story has a fantastic arc to it – where passion overpowers all resistance and wins the day. Really, do not get in Kristen’s way! It won’t end well for you.

Mostly, we talk about movies and our passion for the ones we love. We’ll also hit on a few movies we, frankly don’t love. Kristen’s journey through movies started with classics like The Wizard Of Oz. But, while her parents refused to let Young Kristen see PULP FICTION and CHASING AMY, they let her watch AMERICAN BEAUTY (go figure!). Her wit and insights won her a loyal adult readership at her high school newspaper where she reviewed movies that adults liked.  

In time, her pithy POV found its way into VARIETY, MTV, TCM and ROGER EBERT.COM.

And then to THE WRAP.

If you love hearing people passionate about the movies surfing their passion? You’ll enjoy this one a ton. To quote Bogey at the end of “CASABLANCA”, it feels like “the beginning of a beautiful friendship”.

Happy Halloween, Everyone!!!

It’s a Killer Klown Konfidential all right, as two of the three CHIODO BROTHERS sit in for a special HALLOWEEN EPISODE! The CHIODO BROTHERS, Stephen, Edward and Charles are MONSTER MAKERS and sculptors. They’re stop motion animators, puppeteers and moviemakers, too. Their work on projects like MARCEL THE SHELL WITH SHOES ON, THE SIMPSONS and TEAM AMERICA (among many, many others) is nothing short of brilliant! But, some would argue, their masterpiece is the B movie classic “KILLER KLOWNS FROM OUTER SPACE”, now celebrating its 35th anniversary with a new computer GAME from MGM ENTERTAIINMENT.

We’ll talk plenty of process. How the Chiodos went from East Coast dreamers making super 8 movies outside New York City to highly respected and sought after craftsmen to movie makers in their own right – with a classic to their name.

Lots of cool names get dropped (with stories attached of course): MATT STONE and TREY PARKER, LARRY HARMON and BOZO the CLOWN and SHELLY DUVALL (and her terrific show “FAIRYTALE THEATER”).

Like “Tales From The Crypt”, “Killer Klowns is having a resurgence. Old audiences are re-discovering the Klowns while new (younger) audiences are savoring all the pre-digital makeup and special effects. Not only is everything old now new again, everything old is now appreciated for its artistry.

When they made “Killer Klowns”, the brothers laid down a bold marker. We’ll talk about the choices they made and why they made them. It’s not easy to create a classic movie. Harder still is making its sequel.

Good thing the Chiodos have been in heavy demand by other movie makers. We’ll talk about the aforementioned Marcel The Shell. Also we’ll talk about The Simpsons and especially Team America. That, the Chiodos agree, was the biggest, hardest, most challenging project of their collective careers. Some of their very best work, too!

BRANDON ROUTH was fated to play SUPERMAN. As a kid, he dreamed about playing the MAN OF STEEL. When he got to LA (from Iowa) – and learned WARNER BROS planned a reboot – equal parts hustle, circumstance and luck got him not just an audition, but the role itself in SUPERMAN RETURNS. Since then, he’s donned the cape for LEGENDS OF TOMORROW and the BATWOMAN TV series. He plays another superhero – RAY PALMER/THE ATOM on CW’s ARROW. Of course, Brandon’s done lots of other things, too.

Working With Icons

Working with iconic characters is a very special creative challenge.

For one thing, it comes with a ton of responsibilities – especially if the character you’re working on is as iconic – and as multi-generationally beloved – as Superman.

There’s a reason people keep making and re-making the same super hero movies. Audiences won’t let certain characters go. Superman is nearly a century old! He’s proof that if you get a super hero right, they can endure and make you staggeringly wealthy.

But it’s easier to get super heroes wrong. And there are so many ways to get them wrong.

Batman V Superman

With Batman, there’s a lot of latitude. He’s an odd, dark character to begin with. You can cast Adam West… or Michael Keaton… or George Clooney… or Christian Bale… or Robert Pattinson. And it still works! That’s because you can play Batman as ironic or earnest or emotionally tormented.

Superman is entirely different. He epitomizes the straight and narrow. He’s a boy scout’s boy scout. Instantly and incredibly likeable. Selfless and sensitive. Virile without being alpha dog about it.

Whereas Batman’s outfit is a costume he puts on, Superman’s costume is Clark Kent. The character isn’t Clark pretending to be Superman, he’s Superman pretending to be Clark Kent. So, you’re not casting Clark, you’re casting Superman.

Casting The Man Of Steel

That makes casting really tricky because – as we’ve said here a few times – in film and TV, we really don’t hire actors to act. We hire them to “be”. Who they are. As honestly as they can.

If they act, the camera will see it and it’ll end up on the cutting room floor.

That’s why the best film actors are the ones who excel at being emotionally honest. At being who they are. On cue. For however many takes it takes.

In the case of Superman, that means you have to hire someone who’s a lot like Superman, frankly.

If he tries to act like Superman, it won’t work. Guys like Brandon Routh really don’t act the part of Superman. In a lot of surprising ways, they are it.

So, the answer to the question “How do you cast Superman?” is, you find someone super, man.

You find someone like Brandon.

When we left BRANDON ROUTH, back in S2E62, SUPERMAN RETURNS had just opened to great reviews and respectable numbers, but not respectable enough for WARNER BROS to continue the SUPERMAN REBOOT. They cancelled the next two movies. It’s devastating seeing your future vanish in front of you. But, in time, Brandon found his feet again. He became a regular on CHUCK and PARTNERS. He played TODD in SCOTT PILGRIM VS THE WORLD, and filled the uniform of another super hero in the LEGENDS OF TOMORROW (part of the DC UNIVERSE), THE ATOM.

In time, Brandon also re-donned the Superman cape. Turns out, you really can’t keep a good Superman down.

As Brandon describes it, breaking into the entertainment business is a challenge, but that isn’t the hardest part of it. That would be staying on the show biz mountain.

In this continuation of last episode’s conversation about being Superman, Brandon takes us deep into the highs and the lows of that rare experience. The best part: having found his own inner Superman – and put it to work – Brandon now wants to help everyone else find their inner Superman.

Brandon Routh is quite convinced that everyone has one.

For the first time ever, Gil and I talk about Gil’s last big studio movie, VALKYRIE starring TOM CRUISE and directed by BRYAN SINGER. Bryan asked Gil to produce Valkyrie for him after Gil produced SUPERMAN RETURNS which Bryan also directed. Making Valkyrie changed Gil’s life. That is, it changed the direction his life took. For starters, making a story about Germany during WWII – about the Nazi hierarchy – was challenging to Gil; he grew up in the war’s shadow. In fascism’s murderous shadow. But, this was a story, Gil thought, that the world had to hear.

Claus von Stauffenberg was German royalty. A career soldier, he lost his left eye and right arm while fighting in North Africa. As the war began to bog down, a group of concerned army officers and business leaders met in secret. They plotted to assassinate Hitler, seize control of the government and sue the Allies for peace. Von Stauffenberg joined the plot, knowing (as they all did) what failure would cost.

An AMAZING Story

It’s an amazing story that too few people know. And it made a very good movie – a solid historical thriller. As we’ll tell, The reason Tom Cruise played the part is because he wanted to – and because his company offered to put up a chunk of the original budget. Cruise is actually right for the part in lots of ways. For starters, he’s very good at being stoically heroic.

He’s likeable, too – in that “Tom Cruise” way. That helps a lot to alleviate the lingering “But, Von Stauffenberg was still a Nazi!” taste.

As Gil describes the process, making Valkyrie challenged him on multiple levels starting with the subject matter. Making a story about that subject matter in German – in Berlin no less – presented a host of other challenges. Bryan Singer and Gil are both Jewish. Cruise is (famously) a Scientologist. Germany is very sensitive about its past and how movies and TV shows portray that past. Between the emotions and the logistics, making Valkyrie required every last one of Gil’s considerable producing skills.

This marks the first time Gil and I have talked about “Valkyrie” and how making “Valkyrie” changed Gil’s life. Shortly after making “Valkyrie”, Gil more or less quit the movie business and devoted his life and energies to raising money for America’s veterans.

A Higher Purpose – The Veterans

In the vets, Gil saw a higher purpose than making movies and plunged himself into it.

But then – so the story goes – Gil and Alan started making this podcast. And making this podcast together rekindled their creative relationship and their friendship.

So, for this Thanksgiving, we’re serving up a heaping portion of moviemaking goodness – how Gil and Tom Cruise and Bryan Singer (and an amazing cast) made “Valkyrie”. Each of them felt they had to make this movie.

Now, just wanting to make a movie doesn’t guarantee you a happy, pleasant experience. A lot of factors will ultimately determine that. But, having made “Bordello Of Blood”, Gil and I both can attest to the soul crushing nature of making movies you don’t want to make. Gil very much wanted to make “Valkyrie”. That didn’t make the experience any happier.

It doesn’t get much more “Inside Bas...

When it comes to SHOOTING STARS, few still photographers have shot as many (on so many movie sets) as DAVID JAMES – maybe the most successful SET PHOTOGRAPHER of all time. Stars like TOM CRUISE and directors like STEVEN SPIELBERG and J. J. ABRAMS love working with David because he understands how to tell (and – just as important – sell) their stories via his camera lens. His keen eye discerns what’s truly heroic in SUPERMAN, BATMAN or any other super hero. He sees what makes stars “stars”. REDFORD, STREISAND, FORD – they all sat for David.

The results speak for themselves.

From STAR WARS to BATMAN RETURNS to the MISSION IMPOSSIBLE movies to THE LAST SAMURAI to JURASSIC PARK, David didn’t just snap pretty pictures of actors at work. His incredible eye helped each movie tell its story. In fact, David’s eye often informed the directors he worked with as much as the directors informed David’s eye.

From his first big job as a film developer on the movie EXODUS (working for OTTO PREMINGER) to his high flying stunt photographing Tom Cruise sitting atop the BURJ KHALIFA, the world’s tallest building, David has traveled to the ends of the earth to pursue his craft. His stories of those travels will blow your mind. They’re that crazy good!

And, of course, David and Gil will talk about CONSTANTINE and SUPERMAN RETURNS, the two movies they worked on together. They’ll dish on KEANU REEVES.

As Gil says of working with David, David taught him the difference between a “still photographer” and a still photographer. From a movie producer’s point of view, the differences are gargantuan.

Put another way, there are shooting stars and there’s shooting stars.

Our good friend – and a guest on this podcast – ELLIOT SILVERSTEIN – just passed away. He was 96 and had an extraordinary run. He was a terrific director with features like CAT BALLOU, A MAN CALLED HORSE and THE CAR to his name. Also, Elliot directed lots of TV including TALES FROM THE CRYPT. That’s when Gil and I first met Elliot.

In total, Elliot directed 4 episodes of Crypt including “The Reluctant Vampire“, one of Crypt’s most beloved episodes. It stars our other friend Malcolm McDowell.

Perhaps Elliot’s biggest accomplishment though happened off screen. Elliot led the Director’s Guild of America and created the whole concept of “a director’s cut” of a movie. He fought hard for creative rights – and to see those rights fairly compensated.

On the labor front, Elliot Silverstein was a WARRIOR!

We originally published our interview with Elliot back in March 2023. While every other interview has been held remotely via zoom, Elliot was a little too far behind the tech curve to handle setting it up himself. And the staff at Elliot’s retirement home (a euphemism) were less than useless. So, since he was in LA for a few weeks, Gil visited Elliot and oversaw hooking Elliot up to the internet and our podcast.

Having learned to direct during TV’s first Golden Age, Elliot taught himself to see the whole show or movie in his head before he ever calls “Action!”. It made working with him on Crypt a fascinating – and very educational – experience.

We cover a lot of territory in this one. A lot of fascinating characters make appearances: If Elliot’s anything, he’s a kind of Don Quixote tilting at corporate and studio windmills. The word that best defines Elliot at the end of the day: integrity.

DARK CASTLE Entertainment sorta kinda rose from the ashes of BORDELLO OF BLOOD. The creative team had some of the same people as Crypt. And HORROR was its calling card. The brain child of JOEL SILVER, ROBERT ZEMECKIS and GIL ADLER, Dark Castle set out, initially, to re-make the movies in the WILLIAM CASTLE canon: HOUSE ON HAUNTED HILL, 13 GHOSTS, THE TINGLER…

For a brief moment, it looked as if Dark Castle might catch fire. Its first feature – House On Haunted Hill did okay financially. Its second and third features (“13 Ghosts” and “Ghost Ship”) also performed. But then – when Joel wanted to make a fourth Dark Castle movie – “Gothika” – Gil said no; he didn’t want to make Gothika for Joel.

Instead, Gil wanted to make bigger, tent pole movies for Warner Bros – movies like Constantine, Batman Returns and Valkyrie. And, so, Gil and Joel went their separate ways. Stone cold fact? They haven’t spoken since!

Our telling of Dark Castle’s story starts with Gil’s version of events. Then we’ll meet TERRY CASTLE, Bill Castle’s daughter. We chatted with Terry early in Season Two. She took us back stage and introduced us to the crazy world in which she grew up as the daughter of a mega showman. He was larger than life outside the house. A great dad inside.

She had no idea what was waiting for her in the person of Joel Silver. If you’re a fan of Joel Silver stories, this episode has your name on it (alongside Joel’s).

We’ll also talk to directors WILLIAM MALONE and STEVE BECK. Bill directed HOUSE ON HAUNTED HILL while Steve directed “13 GHOSTS” and “GHOST SHIP”. Curiously, after directing “Ghost Ship”, Steve Beck quit the movie business entirely. That’s how bonkers it was.

Dark Castle is still alive as a company though it’s been a while since it actually produced anything itself. It’s kinda sad considering its pedigree.

As we head toward 2024, we’re recalling some of our favorite moments from 2023. DIRTY LAUNDRY is a whole episode filled with favorite moments. Wanna know what’s really happening on a movie or TV set? Talk to “the pretties” – HAIR AND MAKEUP or, even better? Talk RANDALL THROPP – he was the WARDROBE SUPERVISOR on “TALES FROM THE CRYPT”. He also worked on “DEMON KNIGHT” and “BORDELLO OF BLOOD” and the TV version of “THE SHINING“.

The folks in WARDROBE and COSTUMES see a set’s literal dirty laundry. Often, they’re the ones who have to clean it up. Uch!

And yet (from a producer’s perspective), thank goodness they’re there! That means we (the producers) won’t have to. In fact, most of the time? The producers know little to nothing about what’s actually happening on their sets. Holy shit, what we’ve been missing!!!

Who’s sleeping with whom? Ask Wardrobe. Who needs to focus a little more on their bathroom habits and cleanliness? Wardrobe has the proof! Who, for real, are the mensches and who are the shits? Wardrobe knows absolutely everything.

So, when we say Randall has some great stories, we mean it: Randall has some great stories.

Randall now works for PARAMOUNT PICTURES; he manages its remarkable wardrobe collection – lending pieces to movies and museums – but, most importantly – respecting the place wardrobe has in filmed entertainment. And the place filmed entertainment has across the world’s cultures.

Think of this as an early Christmas present from us to you. Now you’re going to start looking forward to getting DIRTY LAUNDRY every Christmas!

TV and movie producer SCOTT STONE calls himself a “SERIAL ENTREPRENEUR”. We think of him as a “rolling Stone” because he’s actually one of the most prolific TV PRODUCERS ever. Among his credits are LEGENDS OF THE HIDDEN TEMPLE, THE MAN SHOW, SHOP TIL YOU DROP, THE MOLE and TOP DESIGN. Horror’s not really Scott’s thing. Nor are feature films. But, also among Scott’s copious credits are “FREDDY’S NIGHTMARES: THE NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET TV SERIES” and “CHILDREN OF THE CORN 2”, based on STEVEN KING’s short story.

Scott’s over 50 TV shows have played in nearly every country on earth. He’s introduced people like COOPER ANDERSON,  JIMMY KIMMEL, ADAM CAROLLA, DR. DREW PINSKY, KRISTEN WIGG, NICOLE SCHERZINGER, JOSH HENDERSON and GREG KINNEAR.

We’ll talk to Scott about how someone even manages to make a handful of shows, never mind 50! It really does take a particular – special for sure – kind of person. What’s most shocking maybe about Scott Stone? He’s made all those TV shows – with lots more to come – and he’s one of the nicest, kindest, most generous people walking the planet.

ANDY KAUFMAN makes an appearance (because Scott worked for CHUCK BRAVERMAN, the award-winning documentarian and Braverman produced “ANDY KAUFMAN PLAYS CARNEGIE HALL”. So do shows like PEOPLE’S COURT, LOVE CONNECTION and THUNDERCATS. Scott had a hand in them all!

We do a deep, deep dive into the whole story behind the making of “FREDDY’S NIGHTMARES: THE NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET TV SERIES”. That really is a remarkable story! Just as remarkable – how he ended up producing “CHILDREN OF THE CORN II”. Though he got a feature film under his belt, after making Corn 2, Scott swore off doing features forever.

COTC 2 is a smaller example of How NOT To Make A Movie.

Finally, we’ll talk to Scott about USC – where he went to film school and where he now teaches TV.

Horror has been just a tiny fraction of Scott’s output. So, he’s not really a “Rolling Stone of Horror”.  He’s just one of the “Rolling-est” Stones of all time.

Photo 105438911 © Vaclav Volrab | Dreamstime.com

It’s a question that comes around every year as reliably as Christmas itself: “Is Die Hard a Christmas movie?” In this BONUS EPISODE, Die Hard’s screenwriter – our good friend STEVE DESOUZA – brings plenty of hard evidence that proves not only IS Die Hard a CHRISTMAS MOVIE, it’s way more of one than than the classic “White Christmas”.

In a Yahoo News/YouGov poll taken this very year, half of Americans agree with Steve that, yeah, Die Hard’s a Christmas movie. Fight me on it! Or, better yet, “Ho-ho-ho”.

Now, there is resistance to the idea. The movie’s star – Bruce Willis – has always said he didn’t think Die Hard was.

Who’s right here? Who are we to say? We’re just humble movie makers asking a question.

We leave it to you to find your own answer amidst the chaos. And Happy Holidays from everyone at The How NOT To Make A Movie Podcast!

In this GRAB BAG OF GOODIES, MALCOLM MCDOWELL, TAYE DIGGS, SHERRIE ROSE, BARRY PRIMUS MARK IVANIR, CHARLES FLEISCHER and BRANDON ROUTH all do a little ACTING UP as they take us deep inside their acting process to where the nitty meets the gritty. Where characters really come alive inside actors’ heads.

We’ve said many times on this podcast that we never, ever hired actors to act. That’s because, in film and TV, the camera sees everything – including acting. That’s why the best, most successful film actors don’t act for the camera. They just “are”. They’ve learned how to be the most  honest version of themselves – for the camera. There really is a craft to acting for the screen.

Actors Talk Acting

Malcolm talks about his experience making CALIGULA – another great example of how NOT To Make A Movie. Or porn for that matter.

TAYE DIGGS takes us into his acting process. He’s actually got terrible stage fright but has taught himself to overcome it completely. That gave him the courage to appear on – and win – LIP SYNC BATTLE.

At Crypt – where we usually hired actors only once – we hired SHERRIE ROSE three times because we liked her so much! Sherrie shares the story of making the “ON A DEAD MAN’S CHEST” episode, directed by WILLIAM FRIEDKIN. Sherrie’s also a filmmaker in her own right. She tells another story, too, about a big directing break that would have required her to check her integrity at the door.

BARRY PRIMUS took us backstage to the first time he auditioned for JEROME ROBBINS and then sat in while Robbins directed the brilliant ZERO MOSTEL.

CHARLES FLEISCHER’s parents wanted him to be a doctor. Charlie wen to LA instead and got hired on LAUGH IN and lots of other classic 70’s comedies. In time, he became the voice of ROGER RABBIT. All the while, Charlie dreamed of growing up and becoming a scientist.

Multilingual MARK IVANIR  acts all over the world. Americans would recognize Mark from his work on SHOWTIME’s HOMELAND as a vicious Russian spy. Mark talked about the craft of acting. Mark’s quite a craftsman. That’s why keeps working with master like DE NIRO, CHRISTOPHER WALKEN, KATHERINE KEENER and the late PHYLIP SEYMOUR HOFFMAN.

Finally, BRANDON ROUTH talks about getting the role of his lifetime: Superman in “SUPERMAN RETURNS”. The really, really weird thing is? Brandon saw it coming from a long, long way off. Now that’s super, man!

We’ve picked out some of the best bits from this year’s conversations with actors. It really was a season where acting up made for some of our favorite conversations.

It’s hard to believe our friend Tobe Hooper has been gone so long. Hardly a podcast goes by where we don’t reference Tobe one way or another. He was a fascinating person to know and work with. Like a lot of people who succeed in horror – or who create iconic horror characters and stories – Tobe was a pussycat. There wasn’t anything scary about him.

Tobe changed the horror business. That changed the movie business. Now, Tobe didn’t set out to change any of that when he set out into the movie business in the 1960’s.

At the time,  he was a college professor and a cameraman in search of work. In 1965, he made a documentary short subject called “THE HEISTERS”. It was good enough to get invited to enter the short subject category for an Oscar.

Alas, Tobe couldn’t finish his cut in time for that year’s competition. But an early cut did get the invite.

With Tobe, there was always something there.

Four years later – in 1969 – Tobe made his first feature – EGGSHELLS” for $40,000. We talk about it in the episode.

Eggshells didn’t go anywhere. But it got Tobe – and his friend Kim Henkel – thinking. About how TO make a movie that might go somewhere.

As many aspiring moviemakers do, Tobe and Kim turned to horror. And, before long, inspiration – in the form of murderers ED GEIN and ELMER WAYNE HENLEY – hit. Like a chainsaw.

In the episode, we interviewed Kim Henkel and Levie Isaacks.

As Kim will tell you, he and Tobe were like brothers. In all the good ways and some of the bad ways, too.

While Levie ended up as a director of photography – and he DP’d for Tobe on multiple occasions including feature films and an episode of Tales From The Crypt – Levie has a very different credit on the original “Texas Chainsaw Massacre”.

In fact, you won’t find him in the credits. But he’s definitely there in the movie. I’ll let Levie tell the story.

We’ll start with Gil however. I had the pleasure of working with Tobe on several occasions. Always richly rewarding.

But, Gil and Tobe were buddies. They really had a relationship.

For our LAST EPISODE OF THE YEAR (and the season), we present (what our old pal the CRYPT KEEPER would have called “the BEAST of the Year”. Included here are a few favorite bits including our CAR RIDE TO HELL – the story of 6 hours spent driving around L with uber producer JOEL SILVER. There’s our chat with “smartest guy we know” ROGER NYGARD and his reflections on TREKKIES. Then there’s CHELSEA REBECCA and JAMES JANISSE from DEAD MEAT.

Not only did we get to sit down for a chat with Chelsea, we all agreed to work together on a great new streaming TV show we’re about to take to the marketplace (think NETFLIX or AMAZON PRIME or APPLE TV). It’s called ARE YOU AFRAID? and it’s going to be wicked fun just like “Tales From The Crypt” was.

But, whereas Crypt was an anthology, “ARE YOU AFRAID?” is a regular streaming series with one big storyline. Chelsea and James are going to be both actors in the project but also part of its Executive Producing corps!

So sample what a good year it was. But, don’t think you’ve had everything we do. There’s still plenty left in the hopper.

Stay tuned! As our old pal the Crypt Keeper would finish it: “the BEAST is yet to come!”

It’s kinda weird, but we feel like we’ve been waiting for 2024 all our lives! And now that it’s here, we’re excited about “Starting Over”! On the one hand, by “starting over”, we mean going back to the very beginning (as Maria sings in The Sound Of Music, it’s “the very best place to start”). Back to how it was when Gil and I started making “Tales From The Crypt” together. We were just hitting our creative stride. We soared doing Crypt and we saw it as the launching pad to the next phase of our creative career together. And then “Bordello Of Blood” happened instead.

And all those lovely visions of career heights blew apart like a movie monster coming unglued. “The How NOT To Make A Movie Podcast” has always been a story about a relationship told with brutal honesty. That’s probably why ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY called our Season One “The Best Film Podcast Of 2022″.

This Is One Of Those Stories…

…where telling the story is part of the story.

Gil Adler and I didn’t speak for 25 years. There were some very hard feelings between us. But, after dealing with my own mental health issues, I felt not only ready to tell the Bordello story, I felt compelled to tell it. And that meant contacting Gil – and getting him to climb aboard this enterprise. That’s when things got super interesting. To our mutual surprise, more or less, we picked up right where we left off. 

Making “The How NOT To Make A Movie Podcast” about “Bordello of Blood” fixed what making “Bordello” broke. In fact, working on this podcast together has made things even better in lots of ways. Not only did we easily slip back into being creative together, an idea popped into the middle of that creativity and we’re about to take that idea – “ARE YOU AFRAID?” – out into the TV marketplace (to places like NETFLIX and AMAZON PRIME and APPLE TV).

So, as we start the year and our creative partnership anew – c’mon, 2024! – we want to salute and re-tell the story that “started it all” (by stopping everything) – the first five episodes of The How NOT To Make A Movie Podcast. Or, as we like to think of it, our “origin story”.

Because of file size limitation, we have to break the story up into two separate podcast episodes. But that doesn’t mean you have to! Wit that in mind, here’s the whole “Bordello Of Blood” shebang right here in one glorious gulp –

This episode is a continuation of S3E1, Starting Over, Part 1.

It’s kinda weird, but we feel like we’ve been waiting for 2024 all our lives! And now that it’s here, we’re excited about “Starting Over”! On the one hand, by “starting over”, we mean going back to the very beginning (as Maria sings in The Sound Of Music, it’s “the very best place to start”). Back to how it was when Gil and I started making “Tales From The Crypt” together. We were just hitting our creative stride together. We soared doing Crypt and we saw it as the launching pad to the next phase of our creative career together. And then “Bordello Of Blood” happened instead.

And all those lovely visions of career heights blew apart like a movie monster coming unglued. “The How NOT To Make A Movie Podcast” has always been a story about a relationship told with brutal honesty. That’s probably why ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY called our Season One “The Best Film Podcast Of 2022”.

This Is One Of Those Stories…

…where telling the story is part of the story.

Gil Adler and I didn’t speak for 25 years. There were some very hard feelings between us. But, after dealing with my own mental health issues, I felt not only ready to tell the Bordello story, I felt compelled to tell it. And that meant contacting Gil – and getting him to climb aboard this enterprise. That’s when things got super interesting. To our mutual surprise, more or less, we picked up right where we left off. 

Making “The How NOT To Make A Movie Podcast” about “Bordello of Blood” fixed what making “Bordello” broke. In fact, working on this podcast together has made things even better in lots of ways. Not only did we easily slip back into being creative together, an idea popped into the middle of that creativity and we’re about to take that idea – “ARE YOU AFRAID?” – out into the TV marketplace (to places like NETFLIX and AMAZON PRIME and APPLE TV).

So, as we start the year and our creative partnership anew – c’mon, 2024! – we want to salute and re-tell the story that “started it all” (by stopping everything) – the first five episodes of The How NOT To Make A Movie Podcast. Or, as we like to think of it, our “origin story”.

Because of file size limitation, we have to break the story up into two separate podcast episodes. But that doesn’t mean you have to! With that in mind, here’s the whole “Bordello Of Blood” shebang right here in one glorious gulp –

In this one, I go back to college as Gil and I sit down with BRETT GOLDSTEIN, my freshman semester roommate at VASSAR COLLEGE. This Brett is the American CASTING DIRECTOR and TALENT MANAGER, not the English actor. Brett won an EMMY AWARD casting HOMICIDE: LIFE ON THE STREET. He also cast feature films like DONNIE BRASCO, GI JANE and POOTIE TANG!

Whatever made us bad roommates then doesn’t seem to bother us now! Could it be we’ve all grown up?

The Vassar Drama Department

As we go back to college, we’ll talk about what being at Vassar did for both of us. When Brett and I were haunting VC’s Drama Department, they were still singing the praises of MERYL STREEP who’d graduated from Vassar just a few years before. Also spending time in Vassar’s Drama Dept – FRANCES STERNHAGEN, LISA KUDROW, JON TENNEY, JASON BLUM (creator of BLUMHOUSE PICTURES) and NOAH BAUMBACH.

While at Vassar, Brett spent his summers interning at the WILLIAMSTOWN THEATER FESTIVAL. The relationships he forged there guided his life. We’ll talk about how that happened. Brett’s a great storyteller and he’s got a virtual shit-ton of stories to tell!

We’ll even tell a very cool story about how our VC classmate – CONNIE CRAWFORD – won a contest that SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE threw in hits fifth season – “ANYONE CAN HOST!” Connie appeared on SNL in our freshman year – while we all watched (from Vassar), both sick with envy and glowing with pride.

Young Playwrights Ukraine

Stick around for Brett’s description of YOUNG PLAYWRIGHTS UKRAINE, the project Brett and his wife (the writer LAURA CAHILL) have run for several years. It’s given several Ukrainian college students a chance to tell their stories – and to have their scripts both read and produced by the entertainment community. It’s very exciting!

So, enjoy our trip back to college. I’d say those were the days except the days coming are even more exciting!

In this episode, we’re doing our own version of the BBC’s classic show “DESERT ISLAND DISCS“. On that show, guests are invited to answer the question, if you were marooned on a desert island and could take five pieces of music and two books, what would they be (and neither book can be Shakespeare or the Bible)? Because we’re movie makers, we’ve swapped the music for movies and music for the books. So, the question is: “what are your 5 FAVORITE MOVIES and your 2 FAVORITE SONGS?”

Funny thing? Though Gil Adler and I were creative partners and best mates for a decade, if you had asked me back then what my friend’s five favorite movies were, I would have been at a total loss.

I had zero idea then and, until we made this episode of our podcast, zero idea now.

Turns out a lot of our choices feature the same attributes: they’re well-written, well told stories about emotions and feelings and how tricky it can be to navigate these things.

Among The Movies:

BRIDGE ON THE RIVER KWAI

AN AMERICAN TAIL

BUTCH CASSIDY & THE SUNDANCE KID

KILLERS OF THE FLOWER MOON

BARRY LYNDON

FORREST GUMP

DON’T LOOK NOW

ANYTHING GROUCHO MARX

NETWORK

Among The Songs:

SOMEWHERE OUT THERE, Leonard Cohen’s amazing HALLELUJAH, THE WAY WE WERE and A LITTLE PRIEST from the Stephen Sondheim musical SWEENY TODD.

About that last one… stories about cannibalism seem to tickle something inside us. That could explain the new show we’re about to take into the streaming TV marketplace – ARE YOU AFRAID?

It’s a wickedly fun show about flesh-eating ghouls and it asks the question “in a world as fucked up as ours, is it really so weird to want to be the monster?”

But, first things first. Join us as Gil and I discuss some of our very favorite movies and songs – and why we love them so much!

Long before she became an adjunct lecturer at BROWN UNIVERSITY in its Department of Theatre Arts and Performance Studies, my friend CONNIE CRAWFORD did something for which I envied her intensely. In 1978, She appeared on SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE. She acted in sketches and everything! She was one of five finalists in the “Anyone Can Host SNL” contest they held during season 3. BUCK HENRY hosted. Connie tells some great stories about that experience. Hell, Connie tells a lot of great stories!

We were both freshman at VASSAR COLLEGE – in a Drama Department that was still buzzing about very recent graduate MERYL STREEP. As guest BRETT GOLDSTEIN and I discussed a few episodes back, Vassar was a great place to study drama. It was a great place to study – PERIOD. But, Connie says, she did not learn how to act at Vassar.

Nor did she learn how at Julliard. It wasn’t until she’d toured for a couple of years and been a working actress that she met and studied with UTA HAGEN. Then, says Connie, finally, she understood what acting was and how to actually do it.

Connie’s spent the last two decades teaching young actors at Brown all those amazing secrets. But, Connie’s favorite tool for helping actors (young and old) to become better actors? Horses.

We’ll talk about horse therapy. How horses can teach us to listen. For actors, that’s vital. We’ll talk about working with huge stars and directors and we’ll talk about how the casting process – including at colleges and universities – can do lasting damage to those being cast.

We’ll talk A L O T about SNL. The early years especially. While Connie and I both loved that show on a cellular level, also that show inspired us on a cellular level. Some day, I hope, like Connie, to get to say those words: “Live From New York, It’s Saturday Niiiiiiiiiiiight!”

A quick technical note about this particular episode. We’re experimenting with a new recording platform to replace Zoom. We encountered various technical issues; we apologize for any inconsistencies in sound and video.

Damned bugs!

We could also call this one “Rust Bust Discussed” since that’s what we’re going to do – update our earlier talk about New Mexico indicting actor/producer Alec Baldwin on manslaughter charges. ALEC BALDWIN, you recall, held the 1880’s prop gun on the set of independent western film “RUST” on October 1, 2012. When the PROP GUN fired during a rehearsal – it had a real bullet inside of it – it killed the film’s DP HALYNA HUTCHINS and wounded director Joel Souza – both on the other side of the camera during the rehearsal. We’ll talk about this tragedy with producer and 1st assistant director DREW BAILEY.

How To Be An Assistant Director

Australian, Drew has worked nearly every job on the production side of the camera. He discovered a passion for AD-ing early on. As Drew describes great AD’s, they’re actually the on-set producer. Drew has applied his considerable behind-the-camera talents to movies like MISSION IMPOSSIBLE 2, SCOOBY DOO, LAST SAMURAI, BLOOD DIAMONDS and the MATRIX sequels.

Drew and Gil first worked together on SUPERMAN RETURNS (Drew was a second AD on the second unit crew). When Gil returned to Australia to produce the little movie “BUCKLEY’S CHANCE”, he hired Drew. They had a great experience working together and became friendly. Drew’s a great illustration of what it takes to break into and stay in the movie business.

The real secret to Drew’s success? He’s a great people person and a great listener who hears what the people around him actually are saying. Drew also has a knack for doing what he sets out to do.

Drew just finished shooting a feature called THE DEB. It’s actor REBEL WILSON’S directing debut. Our friend ROSS EMERY DP’d what sounds like a terrific upcoming 2024

He tells a fantastic story that answers the question: “who does one have to fuck (in show biz) to get anything done?”

The 5 X 2 Challenge

Also, Drew will step up and take our “5X2” challenge. Here’s the premise: you’re taking a long, long rocket journey across the universe. Alas, the entertainment system has limitations. You can only take with you five movies and two songs.

That means the movies better be great ones that you can bear watching repeatedly… and repeatedly… and repeatedly. Think of the songs as a balm between movie watching.

Rust

Finally, we’ll return to the subject at hand: Rust – and how ineptitude and greed – magnified by prosecutorial wrongheadedness – produced an evolving tragedy.

All death on a movie or TV set should be make believe. Never real. Same goes for all other injuries.

What happened on the set of Rust that day? And why has justice taken such strange twists and turns, seemingly away from actual justice? We’ll get into it!

Next year, in January, horror movie fans will celebrate the 30^th ANIVERSARY of the movie TALES FROM THE CRYPT PRESENTS DEMON KNIGHT. The movie succeeded because it had a great script by CY VORIS and ETHAN REIFF (who also wrote KUNG FU PANDA). ERNEST DICKERSON brought both remarkable skills as a director and cinematographer, and a deep down love of horror movies.  This podcast has focused on the second Crypt feature BORDELLO OF BLOOD. But there are a few UNTOLD STORIES about the first Crypt feature, DEMON KNIGHT, too! 

Some pretty juicy ones! Like how Gil and Alan unceremoniously fired Cy and Ethan off the movie. Now, in our defense, part of our obligation was to “Cryptify” the script. We never really expected Cy and Ethan to do that. And we never expected them to understand why. But, a conversation would have smoothed a lot of ruffled feathers back then.

Those feathers might have remained ruffled, but they’d have had a fuller context in which to be ruffled.

So, yeah… we fired Cy and Ethan.

In S3E8, the next episode of this podcast, we’ll give Cy and Ethan the chance – finally – to tell us – to our faces – what that felt like and what they thought of it.

And us.

Gulp!

But, that’s next episode. In this one, we’ll hear Ernest’s side of this crazy story – as a prelude.

We’ll also talk to Ernest about the rest of his considerable oeuvre. Before he became a highly respected director of film and television, Ernest was a highly respected director of photography. He DP’d lots of Spike Lee’s early movies – like SHE’S GOTTA HAVE IT, DO THE RIGHT THING, JUNGLE FEVER and MALCOLM X.

While Bill Sadler (one of our favorite actors) plays the actual “Demon Knight” in making the movie, Ernest was, in many ways, the movie’s real Demon Knight – going to war to protect his vision like it was the blood inside Brayker’s artifact.

And, we’re so glad he was!

Thirty years ago, in 1994, alongside my creative partner at the time Gil Adler, I co-produced the now CLASSIC horror movie “TALES FROM THE CRYPT PRESENTS DEMON KNIGHT”. The movie opened on Friday, January 13, 1995. As often happens in the movie biz, as producers, we fired the original writers – CY VORIS, ETHAN REIFF & MARK BISHOP from the project. Unceremoniously. Thirty years later, Cy and Ethan will at long last get a little payback. In fact, they’ll finally get to fire back at us because we fired them! This monster movie features payback.

Now, Cy, Ethan & Mark’s script was terrific when we bought it. That’s why TALES FROM THE CRYPT’S executive producers (JOEL SILVER, RICHARD DONNER, WALTER HILL and ROBERT ZEMECKIS) bought it! And Cy and Ethan are top notch writers. They co-wrote KUNG FU PANDA and created shows like BRIMSTONE and SLEEPER CELL.

But, Is it ‘Crypt’ Enough?

But, the problem was, their script wasn’t “Crypt” enough. The point of the exercise wasn’t just to put out a movie with Crypt’s name on it. The movie needed to represent CRYPT’S BRAND in every way. One of the things we, as Crypt producers, felt at the time was that the ending in particular wasn’t “Crypt”.

And, so, because Gil and I were writer-producers on Crypt (one of my jobs on the show was to SAFEGUARD OUR FRANCHISE tenaciously), we took on the re-writing chores. That we were producers taking over the writing made Cy, Ethan and Mark even angrier. And then – because we put in a lot of legitimate work, we also sought shared credit for the screenplay. That would have meant shared residuals, too.

In the end, Gil and I lost the credit (and residuals battle). But, now, Cy, Ethan & Mark regarded Gil and I as not just assholes, but carpetbagging assholes.

Such is HOLLYWOOD.

But, in Hollywood, fired writers never get to fire back at being fired (except within their social circles and therapy sessions). Payback for writers? Not on this Planet Hollywood!

Good thing this ain’t Hollywood. It’s THE HOW NOT TO MAKE A MOVIE PODCAST!

And here, we laugh at Hollywood’s rules (sometimes we outright chortle)! With that in mind – and with Demon Knight’s 30^th ANNIVERSARY coming at us next year – we thought it was time to bury the hatchet.

Even if it’s in us!

A ‘Very Special Episode’ On Steroids

In this very, very, VERY special episode (on steroids), Cy and Ethan get an open mic opportunity to speak their minds. And Gil and I get a chance to shut the hell up and listen.

If you’re a fan of Demon Knight, you don’t want to miss this. It’s a very real piece of the behind-the-scenes Demon Knight story happening in real time! Will it, at long last, bring this circle around to a close? What sort of payback are we talking about here? Hell, writers are all crazy! Is it even possible for writers to forgive each other?

We wouldn’t dare ruin the TWIST ENDING for you!

COMIC BOOKS have propelled many a film and TV career. Hell, various SPIDERMAN movies have kept various movie studios alive. DC COMICS was a pillar at WARNER BROS. The MARVEL UNIVERSE has made billions for DISNEY. And where the hell would we be if WILLIAM F. GAINES hadn’t taken over running EC COMICS from his dad in the late 1950’s. EC published titles like VAULT OF HORROR, THE HAUNT OF FEAR and TALES FROM THE CRYPT. I confess to being a COMIC BOOK NERD with a stack of EC comics under the covers, a flashlight within reach, and a bottomless appetite for the DEEPLY IRONIC, equal-parts-FUNNY-AND-SCARY, eye-poppingly-gory stories within those EC panels.

This episode’s guest – GREGORY NOVECK – was even more of a comic book nerd. He’s a writer and a talented producer who achieved his dream job when he became Senior Vice President of Creative Affairs at DC Comics in 2003. His task: take the whole DC UNIVERSE forward into TV, features and the internet. Gregory stayed at DC until 2011 when he went to work at SYFY NETWORK and then, later, PARAMOUNT+.

But, storytelling remains Gregory’s passion. He’s got some great projects in the hopper.

Before we get there, we’ll trade JOEL SILVER STORIES – because Gregory spent a few years, like us, working with/at SILVER PICTURES. We’ll talk about the SHOWTIME series JEREMIAH, the SYFY movie BLOODSUCKERS, JOE DANTE, GEORGE R.R. MARTIN, and comic books, comic books, COMIC BOOKS!

We first met JACKIE GEORGE when we took over running TALES FROM THE CRYPT. Jackie worked for WARNER BROTHERS and SILVER PICTURES at the time (on movies like DIE HARD, RICHIE RICH and DEMOLITION MAN). That means she worked for our old boss JOEL SILVER.  That took considerable balls. Hollywood sized balls.

Jackie was Joel’s executive. Before that, she was a super-talented production coordinator. When you meet Jackie, she and Joel seem an unlikely pairing. He’s an over-the-top, over-bearing, egomaniacal movie producer and she’s a woman with a zero tolerance for other people’s bullshit. Especially when that bullshit is male.

Yet, Jackie stuck it out with Joel for three years – and, boy, does she have JOEL STORIES to tell!

The Deep End

Hollywood has changed a lot since Jackie first arrived from ERIE, PENNSYLVANIA by way of Boston in the late 1970’s. it’s no bedrock of equality and equal treatment today, but, it really was a lot worse before.

When Jackie first landed in LA, she knew very little about the movie business. All she did know was that she was a movie fan enthralled by the flickering images up on the big screen and wanted – somehow – to be part of its creation.

Having an iron will, the willingness to take chances and “more balls than her three brothers combined” (per Jackie’s father), Jackie headed to Los Angeles.

Back in the mid 1980’s, female executives were a lot fewer and farther between. They had to be three or four times the producer any man had to be. And – the icing on that disgusting cake – they also had to tolerate constant sexual predation from their co-workers and bosses. Alas, we all tolerated it which is why it flourished.

Adventures In Hollywood

But, Jackie tells how she successfully navigated those tricky shoals and lots of other challenging situations. Like chasing snow while making DIE HARD 2 or trying to protect 13 year old MACAULAY CULKIN while he made RICHIE RICH. Or muling personal gifts from Joel to MADONNA then from Madonna back to Joel or lunching with GIANNI VERSACE.

If you like Joel stories, this episode’s loaded with them – including lots of new ones we’ve never heard before! We also talk lots about making Crypt – what made it special and what made it especially challenging: Joel.

If you want to make it in Hollywood, you’re gonna need Hollywood size balls. Or a chat with Jackie George.