Inside Stout Ep. 5 - Michael Heagle & Fright Films

We have a very spooky special just in time for the Halloween season! We invited a wonderful and very interesting guest onto the show to talk about nothing other than fright films, otherwise known as scary movies. What's the difference between a fright film and a horror film? Why do some scary movies have poor character development? What flick should you watch on Halloween? Heagle shares with us his love for fantasy and escape through scary movies, his affinity for 80s fright films and so much more! 


Guest:
Michael Heagle, Animation and Digital Media assistant professor & interim Program Director 
Michael's website: https://www.michaelheagle.com/ 

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Transcript

Rachel: 0:00

Hello, everybody. Welcome to Inside Stout, a UW-Stout podcast that focuses on the stories of students, faculty, staff, and others from our campus community. I'm Rachel Hallgrimson

Pam: 0:18

And I'm Pam Powers. And we are members of the marketing communications team here to share with you, everything that makes you UW-Sttout unique ghosts, ghouls, goblins, killer clowns, and knife-wielding psychos it's Halloween. And today we have UW-Stout's own Michael Heagle author, director, and fright film fan to share his love of all that is scary. Welcome, Michael.

Michael: 0:47

Oh, thank you for having me.

Rachel: 0:50

We are very excited

Michael: 0:51

To have you. I'm happy to be here as you could probably guess from the maniacal laugh,

Rachel: 0:57

Is Halloween your favorite holiday?

Michael: 0:59

You know, it's weird. Um, no, uh, but I will say that every day is Halloween at our house. So, um, I, you know, how the Swedish talk about a thing called Allhelgonadagen I think it's called, of course. It's right. So it's that, um, seasonal Christmas is sort of, of the Western cultures exemplary use of Allhelgonadagen we huddle in and we get around the fire and we eat the cookies and drink the cider. Well, I have a Halloween hike, u h, that goes year round where we've got stuff up at the house and horror movies are in deep rotation. And my daughter is, u h, i s an eight year old M ichael Myers fan and so on. So yes and no. Is the answer awesome.

Rachel: 1:46

Did you, uh, take your kid to see the new Halloween movie?

Michael: 1:50

Well, the great thing about that is it's on streaming on Peacock. This Halloween Kills 2021. Apparently it's been done for about a year or two and they've been sitting on it. So I didn't know that. And it is, it lived up to her expectations. She was very excited, u m, and it kind of lived up to mine t oo, if we want to talk more about it. It's, u h, I, I have a non spoiler positive review of that film.

Rachel: 2:12

Awesome. Yeah, I've only heard great things about it so far, but, to get back to you, I want to hear a little bit about how you came to be who you are today. What was your upbringing like and how did you get started into, uh, pressing play?

Michael: 2:29

Yeah. What, how do you end up being one of these swell? I was a kid growing up in the seventies and, uh, so I came out the year that, um, Sesame Street came out. Okay. And around about the year that Scooby-Doo came out. So between those two things, you have a pretty good eye on what I'm into seventies. Horror though was really, really dark. You know, you had the Exorcist and my parents weren't taking me to stuff like that, but right, roundabout, the end of that decade, 78 80, they started saying, we're tired of sitting at home or getting babysitters. We're going to take the kids to R rated films. So roundabout about 1980, we ended up at, and that we should stick, you know, Jaws should really be in there. That should have been an R. And I saw that at eight age eight or whatever. And that, that left a big impact. I, my mother bought me the making of Jaws paperback book, which I poured over endlessly at age eight and then the making of King Kong, which is a beautiful paperback book. Um, so I was into those two things and that I, in a lot of people say, you know, age 12 or so you kind of know what you want to do with your life. I think it was a little bit earlier for me and roundabout, the time we're talking about things like Ray Harryhausen, films, stuff, running on TV, like Godzilla films, still watching Scooby do you know? Uh, so monster things were in the, always in the periphery. Y

Pam: 3:51

I hope we can talk a little bit about your book. You wrote the book Class of 1988 Fright Film Annual, which is really just a great celebration of the eighties fright films

Michael: 4:03

Thank you. Uh, yeah. And I'm wearing my, this is a 1987 film, but my Witchboard shirts today in honor of doing this? Um, yeah, uh, up until the eighties, you know, films, horror films had to be kind of serious and roundabout, maybe Ghostbusters and some other things in the eighties, people realized that you could have more of a roller coaster if you had a little bit of fun in addition to the scares and you could sort of amplify it's like a salted caramel, right. They call it the caramel is much better with the salt on it. How did you do that? So, you know, it was a great time to come of age, you know, if I was 12 in 1980, which I think the math is right for that, that was just when that horse cycle was starting back up. So you have the Shining, the Fog, all of the Halloween imitators, anything that had a holiday. And it was one of those, a prom night terror train, New Year's Evil Motel, Hell Mother's Day. All those were 80s. I didn't see them then, but you know, the, the machine had started. And for me, starting to rent videos in high school, Ghostbusters evil, dead to fright night, lost boys, you know, and seeing some of them in the theater. I began to recognize the power of mixing those flavors. And several of the things that I wanted to see i n movies were happening. So it was like Lost Boys i s a pretty good example. One of my favorites, it's a lot of music. Everybody looks really cool, it's shot nice. There's tensions and scares, a nd that are coupled with really big laughs and there's a family story at the heart of it that j ust is still relevant. You know, we can still react to it and relate to it so t hat, you know, eighties music, u m, and how that overlaps with, with these movies. I would think, you know, something like Thriller is the quintessential example of that, where Michael Jackson sees, you know, the Rick Baker special effects in the 1981, American Werewolf in London and goes home after he liked to have him direct my movie, my little movie, I didn't want to make, I would like to see myself as a monster and then to do make Thriller, which is a great song, be one of the most important videos, probably it's set off the whole, the whole thing. Um, so yeah, what a great time to be alive. And then to celebrate 88, I felt it was kind of the end of that decade. A little bit. I was in college. I was sophomore, junior in college. And, uh, then I started focusing and then the nineties came and kind of screwed it all up, I think. And what happened with the nineties fright films by the nineties? I think one of the big turning points was that, um, you had the couple of computer graphics, movies show up. You had Terminator two in 1991 and then Terminator, Jurassic Park in 93. And everybody went, oh, the thing that makes people excited is computer graphics. We got to do that. And horror started to go by the wayside and they tried to, you know, it tended to be Saifai or adventure things that use, but you saw a little bit of like, oh, here's a scary monster. We're going to, instead of doing it with rubber, we're going to do it with computer graphics because that's, oh, look,Jurassic Park. It must be the thing that people want to see. And it wasn't what we wanted to see. It's just a tool like any other, right? It's not like we go this microphone, oh, this was a better show because they recorded it on this microphone. You know, it's the same thing.

Rachel: 7:30

Like I was telling you earlier, Michael, I am a huge fan of the horror genre, but the term fright film is not something I've heard a whole lot just as a lay person, watching movies. Uh, you know, I was born in the mid nineties, so I don't know, I don't know the difference. What's the difference between a fright film and just like a horror film or a scary movie.

Michael: 7:55

Um, I think I would be reluctant to use the word horror because it means different things to different people.Terror is another word that you could use interchangeably. That means different things to different people. Whereas fright kind of puts the label where, you know, it needs to be so something like silence of the lambs could be afraid film, even though it's very much rooted in a believable reality that yeah, somebody could eat somebody's face off. Um, for me, horror suggests the supernatural and terror suggests things that could really happen that that suck like terrorism suggests, you know, these are, so I tend to like things with supernatural bent because it takes you off the hook. You can be as a fantasy and fantasy is my, my work zone because, uh, I think films at their best are, are escapist. Um, you can certainly say important things, but you can take people on a journey to places they can't otherwise go. Right. And for me, the great place to go is the place where Hey UFO's could exist or, Hey, I go start a real thing. My daughter and I liked, she likes to say, you know, this is kind of scary. I are ghosts going to get me. And I say, there's no evidence in science of a ghost ever getting anybody. Do I want there to be ghosts? I tell her, yes, I would like there to be ghost because I think that makes for a much more interesting world, but I don't think it goes, is going to get you. And then we try not to talk about school shootings, which is terror. Right. And we didn't, the real world is worse. I want to get away from the real world. There's enough of that.

Rachel: 9:34

Yeah. One question I was really excited to ask was, can you explain the difference between the movies you like to make versus the movies that you like to watch that are in the scary genre?

Michael: 9:47

Oh boy. So I'm cranking up to probably do a horror film. It's time. I've been teaching long enough that I'm tired of sitting on my body of work, where it sits currently. I got really busy as I got to school here and started teaching. Um, so my research component, which they say is very important, has fallen is a little bit on the, on the wayside. It's on the back burner a bit in the, uh, you know, service things have taken the front and it's time for me to make the movie that I was put on this planet to make. And it's a little late, you know, I could or should have done it in my twenties. I did make a film in my twenties, which was a feature length shot on 16 millimeter film called Go to Hell. And it's about a tablet news reporter who finds out that a, a Roman Catholic Cardinal has sold his soul to the devil in order to gain power. And he gets embroiled in a kind of JFK sort of conspiracy. And so it's very goofy. It's very cult. And I sort of, it was, everything goes in, you know, kitchen sinking it. Um, Hey, this might be the only movie I ever make. I better just load it with all of my influences. And, and so it was really scattershot plus I made the mistake of kind of thinking that the material was interesting enough. You don't, you don't need to shoot it in an interesting way, just watch the fun things happen. And that's good to an extent. So it was kind of shot more like a TV episode than a movie. And now it's time for me to get to the roots of why do the things that I like work the way they work. I'm starting to finally 50 years on get that, and I'm ready to apply that to, I just got to pick which of the nine or so stories I'm sitting on is going to be the one. And I also have decided that horror is the only one to do that. You can do low budget anymore. If I wanted to do a scifi movie, um, I'm up against, you know, the toughest, the biggest, if I want to do something with superheroes, you know, how are you going to compete? So the horror genre is one where the old tricks still work. And, um, they work because people are easy to trick. Like, I was watching a thing with, uh, the producer of the original Halloween and he said, uh, uh, John director, I want you to have them look to the darkness in the left and scare him on the right. And I want this to be the theater of the mind where we're not going to see any blood we're going to, you know, what we can do with our heads is going to be much scarier than what you can show on screen. And that worked with the budget, which was nothing. It's just a bunch of, you know, basically right out of high school, people who made that movie. And, uh, you know, obviously we're still talking about it many, many years on

Pam: 12:28

Isn't that really, what was kind of what I think makes a fright film is everything's sorta just the camera kind of pans away, and a lot happens off camera and it's more in my mind than what I really probably

Michael: 12:42

We saw. Well, Halloween is the perfect example of that because, um, when somebody gets hurt in that, it's not that it's off camera, but that it's in the darkness or it's behind a thing. Or, uh, you find the body later and you're, you are, you're putting two and two together. What happened to the person and just the stocking nature of the bad guy, the fact that any shadow could be him, was all you needed and that great score, the music that takes it up and elevates. And it's still a, it's still a chilling piece of music

Pam: 13:18

Got to ask. What's your all time, favorite fright film and why? And bonus points if you do voices

Michael: 13:26

That's pretty impossible, but yeah, there'll be voices. Um, I think the shining keeps coming back. Um, I say that, and it's great. It's I know king doesn't love it. Um, but we all do, and it's, it's pretty timeless. And so the sense of dread throughout it is, is palpable. On the one hand, you could say that it's really foolish to cast somebody who looks like he could go and same as a person who goes insane, but, uh, he's so charming. Uh, Jack Nicholson is so charming at the beginning of it that you kind of like, okay, I'm ready. I'm ready to take this ride with you. And I love that the, uh, follow-up film, uh, Dr. Sleep, which is pretty gas too. Um, but it's, it's also as a film person, I can say the shiny because, um, I don't look like an idiot because it's a Stanley Kubrick film. If I said something like Nightmare on Elm street, one and three, because they're equal. Uh, then you know, um, I'm just a geek or a fanboy.

Rachel: 14:30

I'm a huge fan of Nightmare on Elm Street movies. I mean, the first one.

Michael: 14:33

If I let up, if I let up the film professor, uh, lever a little bit, um, Exorcist is really great. If you can buy into like having some faith in the supernatural, that one's pretty brilliant. Um, and all of the number ones, Halloween one Hell Raiser one Nightmare on Elm street. One the only one, the only franchise where that doesn't work as Friday the 13th at first, it was terrible. It's awful. It's awful. But it does have Kevin bacon, one slice of bacon is enough to make it watchable. I bought that box set of the Friday the 13 films a couple of weeks ago, because it had dropped in price. And, um, it's really nice to look at them. They're all brand new shiny transfers. And, um, but they're the worst. They're the worst of those a little bit,

Rachel: 15:19

Right? I, you were saying that, um, your feature-length that you did call to Go to Hell was, has become a cult kind of like a cult classic or

Michael: 15:30

Oh I wish cult classic is kind of a strong word.

Rachel: 15:34

So it's, it's called cult style, but can you explain, can you give me a lesson on what a cult movie is?

Michael: 15:41

Yeah. Oh, it's almost well, a cult film should have a following. Okay. So what I was copying where these sort of midnight movies, or sort of lost drive in movies or Italian or Spanish horror films or Kong Kong movies, that would be considered cult because they have a following, but not too many people know about them. Okay. So how it came about though is actually interesting. When I moved to Los Angeles, I hit a used bookstore and I came across a copy of something called these psychotronic encyclopedia of film by Michael Weldon. It's like 87 88 book. And it's basically like a video guide before there were a lot of video guides talking about all of these oddball films, Vincent Price films, and blaxploitation films and things like that. So I was introduced to that sorta late. Somebody like Weldon was I'm sure seeing it in New York, on 42nd street and seeing it in real time as they came out, but being able to get to them on home video and being in Los Angeles, where that was really easy to do. I started to find, oh, Hong Kong films. Hey, that's an interesting go to the new art. They're having a Hong Kong festival and you see a bunch of John Wayne movies or Jackie Chan films, and your brain goes, oh, there's something besides the eighties American stuff that I grew up on. So what can I take from that? So you're trying to take some of that energy, some of the surprises and shocks that can come out of low budget films and of the only thing that they have working for them is that they don't have to follow anybody's rules. So all of a sudden it's something could come from way out of left field, whether that's like a cultural thing, like the Hong Kong movies where they're changing genre, almost mid movie, like here's some, this is a comedy. And then all of a sudden there's a very, very serious thing that happens like that would not fly in an American comedy. Yeah.

Pam: 17:34

I really want to talk about one 1980s film, which is my cult classic favorite Killer Clowns from Outer Space. It still haunts me some of those clowns and talk a little bit about that. And it's just because I happen to love this film because it scares me so bad. And it's probably why I am a tiny bit afraid of clowns.

Michael: 17:52

You're lucky. That's awesome. I wish it, I wish I was afraid of clowns because there's plenty of clown media to participate in these days and clown costumes that, uh, know they're trying to be scary. They're uncanny. And, um, the new It is a fantastic pair of films, I must say. Uh, It, and It chapter two, but yeah. Um, killer clowns, that was from 88. Um, my daughter and I watched it this year a couple of weeks ago. Um, we saw, she saw it going by in the queue and said, oh, what's that line? Yeah, that's killer clowns. I have that. We can watch it. It's fine. You know, there's nothing too bad about it. She loved it. She loved it because the rubber characters are so fun and weird and they stand around. They don't say anything and they just kind of blink and maybe make some squeaky noises. And then, um, off various characters in very weird and macabre ways, like in compassing them in cotton, candy cocoons, and, um, other things like scary stuff. U h, one guy gets eaten by the sh a shadow puppet T-Rex and j ust, just fun stuff like that. And it's by a bunch of guys who are special effects guys. So it's loaded to the gills with these very, very high end effects that they did all in house. So it looks like a millions of dollar movie, and i t's probably like a million dollar movie, but it's got a, like a, basically a UFO that looks like a big top that lands in the forest. And then these creepy dudes come out and there's like four costumes that they made and they just s tarted change up the hair or change up the outfit, but it goes a long way. And it's, it's fun. It's cartoony and goofy. And I wasn't scared P amela, but i t's w ell,

Pam: 19:35

You know, I have a low threshold.

Rachel: 19:37

Okay. I had a question about character development and in scary movies, I have an issue with this because they often let me down. I'm hearing a little bit and you should correct me if I'm wrong. That sometimes I just shouldn't expect it. Like it's not, that's not always the point, but I do appreciate it. Um, I'm a huge fan of the Conjuring series. Maybe not all the arms that have come out of it, but at least just the Conjuring. Like I think it's one, two and three anyway, but I feel like the main characters of that have really good character development, which like when I'm emotionally like, you know, start attaching myself to the characters, I get more scared when things happen.

Michael: 20:22

That's why the Shining is so good.

Rachel: 20:24

Yeah, the Shining is so good with character anyway, modern day. What's wrong. Console me.

Michael: 20:30

So there's, there's two ways to approach character in horror films. I think there's types like here's the type, here's the cheerleader she's going to die. So we're not going to, we're just going to give you the type, because if we commit to this, it will feel bad if we get rid of her. So that's all of the Friday the 13th movies. No, but no characters developed. Jason is the deepest character. That's moving.

Pam: 20:52

The good looking jock.

Michael: 20:53

Usually just one of those. There's the stoner kid. And yeah, if you see something like, um, cabin in the woods, they make fun of that. And they address that there here's the types, you get the types together and we're here to whatever the film's about spoilers, right? But the other is to do characters that you care about. And I think the trick is, does the producer of the film care enough to do it most of the time? It's no. Cause this is a product and you just get you just getting it out to the marketplace to fill us a screen, a slot. But I'm looking at my 1988 list here and I'm going down the list. And the Blob is an 88 film written by Frank Darabont who did Shashank redemption. And the characters in it are great because it's Frank Dermott and he cared enough to, I'm going to, even if this person's going to die, I'm going to get you invested in them. So it's the difference between, um, fast food in a sit-down restaurant.

Rachel: 21:47

I love going on an emotional roller coaster in any type of film. That's why I don't like romantic comedies because they're just boring to me, but scary movies, drama. I love it. Usually in horror films, there's sometimes love interests, but it, you know, it gets dark and it comes out and there are other things from the past that come out. And, um, I love that about horror films or the scary movie genre, whatever type of scary movie we're talking about. Okay, Michael,

Pam: 22:16

I need to pick a horror film. Oh, what should I watch?

Michael: 22:22

Are you at my house? Are you using streaming services? Because if you're at my house, I have a room that, uh, probably our last

Rachel: 22:30

Invite us over Mike, uh,

Michael: 22:32

It might have to happen. I've been collecting discs since 97 or something. So I have about 2000 movies, probably. So that's an easy, like let's watch we get, and I've got like six more on the way at all times. I got an order out to, um, Arrow films. That's got four, four newbies coming in, but what should we watch? You know, let's talk about what's on streaming right now because this might be applicable. Um, if you can afford it or if you're getting it with cable, Peacock is loaded with great stuff. They've got, that's Nniversal NBC. So they've got the universal films. They've got Frankenstein and Dracula, if you want, they've got the entire nightmare on Elm Street, the entire Friday, the 13th, the entire Chuckie slash Child's Play. So there's, there's a host of great stuff there. I was on Amazon last night and it's, it's so populated with my playlist, quote, unquote, that it's really hard to tell what's on there, but, um, some decent, late eighties things that would be fun to watch some eight titles. I saw the Conjuring for the first time I think on there or on Netflix, hadn't seen it until a couple of days ago actually. And I thought it was good, but I, I would ask who do you think the main character in that is?

Rachel: 23:43

When I think of them, I, of the, the husband and the wife.I can't think of their names, but that's who I think of. And then they go to each, each movie is a different family or, or a situation that they go into. And then they learn the backstory of that family that's haunted or that their house is. haunted.

Michael: 24:02

I like James Alon. He's got it. He's got a good grip on me. Um, I started watching that, not surprisingly with my eight year old daughter. Who's like, she's what she like. Here's how we manage that at home. If you, if you have a young kid, you just talk about it. And if you're doing it during the movie, you can say how something was done. And she's kind of fascinated by that. And on streaming, she's always disappointed that there's not a making of that we can look at to then see, oh, that's how it was done. Oh, dad, I can't wait for the Halloween kills making up so we can see how it was done. Um, me too, because on Peacock, they don't have it. Hey, that's not a Peacock.

Rachel: 24:40

I want to be friends with your daughter.

Michael: 24:41

Ah, she's she's weird. Yeah. We'll see between the two of them. It's a weird set, weird set. It's it's partially my fault. I'm to blame. Uh, what should we watch on Halloween though? Everybody's scared of something different. Just like not everything is funny to everybody. U m, depending on, do you want r ollercoaster or slow burn or oppressive dread? You know, those are the different flavors. I think so r ollercoaster for me would be something like a F reddy or a Lost Boys or something like that. Literally rollercoaster t hey're at a, y ou k now, a slow burn, u m, Hereditary.. Oh, that's a hard one. I don't think I can watch it again.

Rachel: 25:25

I can't either. It's one and done very,

Michael: 25:28

Very effective, so effective that I'm done. I'm done same with his other film, M idsummer, which is terrific, but oh, gut punch. You can see why somebody like Martin Scorsese says Ari Aster is like t he, the, the guy to watch, u m, scary, but, u m, oppressive, dread, Exorcist Shining something called Suspiria by Dario Argento. So a student here recommended it. I was aware of it. And a student said, have you seen this? It's on canopy, the streaming service from stout. You should watch it. Oh, u m, s treaming service, canopy, Suspiria. It's one of the most terrifying things I've ever seen. Wow. And it's 1978 or nine. Wow. And it's very Italian, very weird, very artsy. There's a moment in it towards the end. I'm getting goosebumps, just talking about it. Um, w here th e, the payoff happens. And I just like le ft o ut of my skin. It was the best. It's the best feeling. So alternately hereditary. I sat in bed to watch that. And my body rebelled against me in such a weird way. I had goosebumps. My heart was racing. I had cold. It's really weird how powerful that one is. I don't know why it's, it's a combination of like, the acting is great. The story is great. The performers are just, yeah, it's crazy good. But Suspiria is, is a freebie for Stout students. I think it'd be a really good one to check out. There's a lot of fun stuff on there. Kanopy has, I think the criterion collection for the most part. So lots of classic stuff, not a lot of horror in there, but they also carry what I believe is some of the Aero titles, some of the blue underground tiles, a number of these kinds of, um, sort of boutique Blu-ray things. So they've got sixties, you know, Christopher Lee movies and, uh, Lucio Fulci Zombie, which is like a favorite, bad, bad movie. There's, there's an infinity of things to watch on October 31st. So

Pam: 27:38

Why do we love to be scared? Why do we love scary movies? Fright movies, everything. Why is it? What is it in us that we like it, even though I'm scared of it.

Michael: 27:48

Um, I'm still, I'm still wondering you, you always ask me that question. I don't know that I've answered it fully, but I believe it's that same reason we go on a roller coaster, although that's a different kind of screaming, it's screaming and smiling. Sometimes I'm the same reason. People still pay to go see like a haunted hay ride or something. Why don't we do it? Why did we do it? Um, the pulse is racing. Uh, we feel more alive. We survive all of those. It's very hard to get hurt at one of those. So it's a near death experience that let's us recognize our frailty, probably the same way that driving by a car wreck. Unfortunately, um, we need those moments to appreciate that we are, that our bodies are solid and an intact and not leaking out and spilled all over the ground. You know, we're an inch away at all times from just being done and we need to, the more we recognize that the richer life will be.

Rachel: 28:52

Yeah. I was thinking just, it's almost like a way of showing that adrenaline, even though the, the purpose of adrenaline is to save us in a moment where we are, um, fleeing from danger. It's also something that we want to invoke. And like, we, like, we, it feels good. It, you know, even if you're just sitting in a chair

Pam: 29:16

You know, it's almost like a body high.

Rachel: 29:19

Yeah. And scary movies can invoke that at least. I mean, that's one thing for me, but I don't know. I'm I was trying to think of why I like scary movies. Like if I could even put a finger on it. And I like when the evil, like evil is defeated, it's pretty simple for me. That's the biggest thing.

Michael: 29:38

If you have that, you're pretty satisfied. Yeah. Well, you asked why do we see horror movies? Why do I see movies is, is a different reason. Um, I think fantasy stuff of which scary movies are a quadrant, you know, um, let us escape, um, take us places we haven't seen before. Um, I liked the stuff. I like the paraphernalia. I like the dark scenes and uh, okay. Give me a Gothic castle. Fine. Good. Give me a summer camp with somebody run around. Fine. Good. I'm kind of in for all of those, um, meal use in which these things happen. If you can surprise me as you might with a hereditary or a mid-summer where I, okay. I didn't think Sweden was going to be terrifying that those were the nice guys. Oh, we don't. They have universal health care. I want you to think he's pretty, he looks pretty. Dad had health care is not going to help him there, but the, the stuff I like guys with fangs and I like monsters, monster are a big one. Monsters are a big one

Pam: 30:43

With which leads us right into Transylvania TV. Talk a little about it. You wrote and directed it.

Michael: 30:49

Right. So, um, a friend of mine is a special effects guy. He was, um, um, an effects guy in the twin cities. And when you're an effects guy in a commercial marketplace, you're doing special effects for advertising. So, oh, we're going to build this deck as a miniature because it's too expensive to build one for real. And we're going to photograph and it's gonna look like a real deck, but he was also interested in Muppets and puppets and had designed a character that was an orange, it's kind of a monster Yeti guy. And he showed it to me. And I went well, that is really high end looking. It had the, this is the same for, is it actually Muppet, fleece? This is the brand that, uh, Anton flees that they use for the Muppets and, oh, here's, he's got, you know, ostrich feathers for beard. It's the same thing that they use on big bird. So it was very much like this is a thing and I'm seeing them up at, in person. And I grew up with these and I went was, should be more, what do you want to do with it? Because I got cameras and I like to write things so let's, let's do it. So we added some characters and we built some sets and then we rebuilt some sets and made a series about monsters, big sprays, Eagle, running a television station, just as kind of a device. We needed something kind of like a SCTV thing to get parody ideas. And we thought that a broadcast station, which was at that point, kind of going out of style would be funny, cause a vampire running a station. That's, you know, this was really important in the sixties and seventies and eighties. And now he like cable doesn't exist in streaming. He has no idea actually, uh, in the, the movie that we want to do, um, Dracula is the master of all things vampire, but also he, uh, runs a streaming service called Neck Flicks. So it's full of not just dumb jokes, but it's, it's a little dumb and it says skews a little more than a little adult. So it's well, they look like Muppets. They're rather naughty. Um, and the situations are really situations that I would be interested in. So one wonders what the audience for a show like this is it's people, my age, whatever reason. And they, it's not a good choice. Like there's just not enough of us spending money on things like this. So it's, it's a, it's somewhat of a dead end thing, but we've been doing it since 2007 on and off. And there's been, we've done about 10 episodes. One of which is like a 40, 41 minute Halloween special, which is the, the movie. We shot it with good lenses and it looks, and, um, we wanted it to be sort of a, uh, an evergreen show that you'd whip out every Halloween and watch. And it was written with that in mind, you know, no timely jokes. It was stuff that was sort of classic classic parody things. And, um, we're doing a live special October. 30th might be in time for listening audience here. This is going to be on something called Seca TV, S E K a period that TV. And it's going to be a pay per view event first, but it'll eventually go to a free thing where, um, we're going to have a reunion show with the actors. They're going to watch the show together and comment on it, but then we're going to show them a bunch of behind the scenes stuff that they've never seen before from 10, 12 years ago. So it should be pretty cool.

Rachel: 34:03

Very neat. So earlier you mentioned that you are trying to work on a, another full length film. Is that what you mentioned? So we just want to hear kind of to close off the show from today forward. What can we expect from Michael? He, and we want

Michael: 34:22

In a world where Michael has the wherewithal to make whatever he wants in a world where the budget is not an issue. Uh, Michael will be making a low budget. Number one, uh, number one, you know, what's a number one movie. So something that could set off a chain of other movies, um, having watched the conjuring recently, I went, I, I thought it was a missed opportunity. I know they go into more stuff with the doll, but in that film, nothing happens with the doll. I'm like, oh, you guys are missing. So what I thought was going to happen about two thirds of the way I went, you know, what they should do is they should box up the doll, take it to the house and use it to fight the bad guy. And of course they don't, and they're never going to do that. Right.

Rachel: 35:06

You got to watch the Annabellle movies.

Michael: 35:08

Do they box it up and take it like a weapon to fight other monsters? That's what I want to see. I want to see a monsters versus monster movie. Okay. So I think I said ideal

Rachel: 35:18

World, who are

Michael: 35:18

Your two monsters that, that, you know, okay. Get in the ring. I'm always reluctant to pitch something ahead of writing it because I usually lose steam on it. Sure. But, um, I really love Elvira. And, um, recently in the news with her new, uh, autobiography, pretty fascinating Cassandra Peterson who dated Elvis, uh, who had a long running TV show in Los Angeles and then nationally and had two, two films, um, came out with her or wife, uh, for many years, 10, 10 years or something like that. Um, it's time somebody is going to have to hand off the reins, you know, she's, she is pretty close to done doing that. Um, I am very tempted to buy her new Vesper. There's a 40 unit run. LA Vesper is making an Elvira model Vesper, uh, look for it on online. Uh, 40 grand is beautiful black with spiderweb trim and just fancy, you know, leopard print seats and all of those things. But I think it's time for another Elvira. And I was thinking, what is the, what's the contemporary take on that? And I thought it could be a single mom whose daughter is also a weirdo, like a Wednesday Adams type. So that's my, that's my baseline that I'm working with. I think that's pretty safe. Forget what I'm calling. I'm calling the show. Uh, oh, um, Raven, the movie Maven, I think is her name. So black hair, you know, Raven, Raven, the movie made, but, and her daughter who's like 12 and kind of over it or something, maybe she's got, you know, something like that. That's kind of a cliche, but it might be cool. Um, and I think she's a movie host. I think she's a TV host, but that might be too close to Elvira. So that might, that might spin, but she is, uh, chased by an overzealous fan. Might be like a mast guy. Okay. Okay. So we've got our, our kind of monster leadss. We've got our monster, um, opponent, our antagonist. So they, they go in, they hide, they hide in an old house, which is also haunted. You're going to have

Pam: 37:21

You're going to have every genere.

Michael: 37:22

Genre. So I think then the killer guy comes and the, the ghost is actually like a good ghost that helps them. So somewhere between the Adams family and a little Casper and uh, like it could be a family film if you do it. Right. Right. So

Rachel: 37:40

Awesome. Well, that's very exciting. I'm, I'm excited. I need to keep up with more of the people, more faculty on our campus and things that they're working on. I t's just too much going on. There's so much. I don't know how I'll do that, but anyway, it's been an awesome, awesome pleasure to have you on the, on the show today, Michael, I hope that you enjoyed it too.

Michael: 38:00

Thank you very, very much.

Pam: 38:02

Thank you for listening to Inside Sttout a podcast devoted to the stories of our students, faculty, staff, and campus community. We want to thank Michael for visiting with us today and sharing his love of fright films. Subscribe to us on Spotify and Google podcasts. And don't forget to tune in next time when we share even more stories that go Inside Stout.