Gilbert Gottfried's Amazing Colossal Podcast - 178. Mick Garris

Episode Date: October 23, 2017

Writer, director and producer Mick Garris ("The Stand," "Psycho IV," "Stephen King's The Shining") joins Gilbert and Frank to weigh in on a host of horror-related topics, including the cordiality of Vincent Price, the bravado of Christopher Lee, the generosity of Forrest J. Ackerman and the "ampleness" of Lon Chaney Jr.  Also, Stanley Kubrick ditches the script, Martin Scorsese clears the set, Gilbert hangs with Tobe Hooper and Mick remembers the late, great William Schallert. PLUS: "Rod Serling's Night Gallery"! "Exorcist II: The Heretic"! Bea Arthur meets R2-D2! Mick wins over Norman Bates! And the golden age of horror anthologies! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Tennessee sounds perfect. Hi, I'm Gilbert Gottfried, and this is Gilbert Gottfried's Amazing Colossal Podcast with my co-host Frank Santopadre. We're once again recording at Nutmeg with our engineer Frank Furtarosa. Our guest this week is a writer, author, producer, film historian, and podcaster, and the director of popular movies, television shows, and miniseries. His TV work includes episodes of Steven Spielberg's amazing stories, Freddy's Nightmares, Tales from the Crypt, Pretty Little Liars, Ravenswood, and Once Upon a Time, as well as two terrific horror anthology series of his own creation, Showtime's Masters of Horror and NBC's Fear Itself. Notable feature films include The Fly 2, Psycho 4, Batteries Not Included, Critters 2, and the Disney comedy

Hocus Pocus. With longtime friend and colleague Stephen King, he collaborated on the movies movies Sleepwalkers and Desperation, as well as the miniseries Bag of Bones and Stephen King's The Shining and The Stand, one of the highest rated miniseries in television history. He's also a skilled interviewer and the host of his own podcast called Postmortem, which features interviews with horror legends such as John Carpenter, Roger Corman, the late Wes Craven, and Toby Hooper, who once I had lunch with and he paid. Toby Hooper, who once I had lunch with and he paid. You want more? He's the author of the books Ugly, Development Hell, and A Life in the Cinema. A member of the board of directors of the Hollywood Horror Museum,

along with our previous podcast guests, Joe Dante, Victoria Price, and Sarah Karloff. And perhaps most important to yours truly, he also happens to be something of an expert on the life of my very favorite actor, Lon Chaney Jr. Please welcome to the show a man who must be a Marx Brothers fan because he was once in a rock band called the Horse Feathers Quartet. Quintet. Quintet. I'll fuck up more and I only have one sentence to go. I think the show's half over.

Yeah, this is longer than the stand. A man of many talents and a full-fledged horror ambassador, Mick Garris. Thank you. Wow. talents and a full-fledged horror ambassador, Mick Garris. Thank you. Wow. The kindest and longest introduction

I've ever had. Mick Garris was found dead in his Los Angeles home of an apparent heart attack. Mick, thanks for coming and doing this. Well, it's a total honor to be asked, and I appreciate spending some time

with the legend. Oh, isn't that nice? He means you, Gil. Yes! We needed a Halloween episode, a Halloween guest this year. We had Tom Savini last year. He's great. We had Ron Chaney and Janet Ann Gallo. Remember her? savini last year uh we had he's great we had ron cheney and uh janet and gallo remember her

janet and gallo is i'm i'm drawing a blank oh you'll love this oh this is shameful i want you to leave right how can you call yourself a lon chaney Jr. fan and not know Janet Ann Gallo. They'll know immediately when you tell them. Okay, in the film Ghost of Frankenstein with Chaney Jr. and Bela Lugosi, Janet Ann Gallo was the little girl who was being bullied by a gang of boys till Frankenstein Monster shows up and scares them away. Okay. I hang my head in shame, and I'm glad that this is an audio podcast because I'm blushing.

Don't hang your head in shame. She left the business like a year later. She had a long career. Probably smart. To show you how obscure and how focused this podcast is, we found her. Ah, that was some excavation. Yeah. I was after her for years because I've seen that movie 5,000 times.

The other person he's been trying to get is Donnie Donegan, who was— Oh, yeah. Son of Frankenstein. Yes. Where he looks and sounds nothing like Basil Rathbone, but he's Basil Rathbone's son. I love how it said, well, hello. Yeah, he has a southern accent, and he's the son of Basil Rathbone. Perfect casting.

And I guess he's Frankenstein's son, so therefore he was raised in Germany. Some Bavarian castle somewhere. So why was the band you were in, just to settle this before we go forward, Mick, why was the band you were in just to settle this before we go forward mick why was the band called it was called horse feathers quintet and i've seen it on the internet also referred to as horse feathers it's just horse feathers i don't know where horse feathers quintet came from although there were five of us so you could call us that's all over the internet yeah um we uh in the 1970s we were a progressive rock band, and we were a big fan of the Marx Brothers, as you hinted at. And, you know, we thought a name like Horse Feathers was perfect for a band that you couldn't describe.

So rather than call ourselves bullshit, we called ourselves Horse Feathers. Perfect. Perfect. See how we sussed that out, how clever we are? Extremely, yeah. Even though I got the name of the band wrong no you didn't the internet did yes thank you for that i i gotta ask you before anything else what what did you must have had some trepidations about doing a TV version of The Shining. Because, I mean, that's a movie that I guess we'll have to use the word iconic. Yeah, I would have to agree with that.

Let's call it naivete. It's fairly well known that Stephen King never liked the original film, the 1980 film, based on the book, because it goes so far afield from a book that was very, very personal to him. You know, it's about alcoholism and it's about the guilt of parenthood. And I didn't even think about competing with the Kubrick film. I thought King wrote the screenplay, he's producing this, and it's very faithful to a book that I was in love with. And I never really had a clue about it until I went to Gary Sinise, who had played the lead in

The Stand a couple years before, and I said, would you be interested in playing Jack Torrance in The Shining? And he was the first one who woke me up to it by saying, you know, I'd be hesitant to step into Jack Nicholson's shoes. I went, oh, gee, I wonder if other people would think that. Interesting. So it was pure naivete, but King and I had had such a good experience doing The Stand together. And it was hugely successful that ABC said to him, what would you like to do next? that ABC said to him, what would you like to do next? And he said, I want to do The Shining and have it to be something that's more faithful to the book and the themes that he was interested in doing.

And my thought was more about working with King again than it was about satisfying the fans of the Kubrick film. Right. What was his principal objection, Stephen King's, to Kubrick's version of the film, of the Kubrick film. Right. What was what was his principal objection, Stephen King's to Kubrick's version of the film of the book? Well, well, it's interesting just their personalities in their creative work alone. King, I would call very warm and Kubrick is very cool or cold. You know, his his films are very intellectual and very mechanical in a really great way. He's, you know, The Shining is a great and iconic movie, and it's a great Kubrick film, but it's not a very good Stephen King adaptation in that the warmth, you know, Jack Nicholson, his Jack Torrance starts out crazy and gets crazier. And in the book, Jack Torrance is a guy who starts out feeling guilty because he's drinking. He's hurt his young boy.

He feels the guilt of being angry enough at his child to want to hurt him. And he is that boiler in the basement that's ready to blow. And this was a very autobiographical book for King who it's pretty well known that he's a recovering alcoholic, has not drunken in decades, but at that time he was, at the time he wrote that book. And so those themes were really, really personal to him. And the Kubrick film, King had actually written a draft of The Shining for the Stanley Kubrick film, and Kubrick just tossed it in the wastebasket. Did you know that, Gil?

Just toss the script? No. Yeah. Yeah. Yep. Did you know that, Kilman? Just toss the script? No. Yeah. Yeah. Yep. I didn't know, too, and in doing research about you, is this true that part of Kubrick's deal was that King could not publicly criticize the film?

That is true. It was a little late, but Kubrick got a million and a half dollars for us to be able to do the miniseries from ABC and Warner Brothers. Wow. To not have anything. But part of his deal was, no, Stephen King could no longer say publicly negative things about his movie. Now, did Stephen King ever talk to you? Because he did. I mean, every one of his books practically was made into a movie and usually an awful movie.

Yeah, I would say the batting average was not good. Did he talk to you about those movies? Yeah. Well, I made a bunch of them, but, uh, but, uh, you know, he, he said famously said something that makes a lot of sense to me when people say, you know, well, what do you think about people when they fuck up your book with this movie? And he says, the book is right here on the shelf and it hasn't changed. It may be a shitty movie, but my book is right here and it hasn't been affected in any way. So he learned to be very philosophical about it. Well, The Stand is a very good adaptation. Thank you. And I know he's happy with it. Very much so.

I mean, that's what led to him asking me to do The Shining afterwards and the many other collaborations we've had. All right, now you listen up. I'm not responsible for you being here or for the dead people in your hometown. Neither is Denninger or the nurses who come in to take your blood pressure. Then who is? No one.

Everyone. God. Who knows? All you have to do is resign yourself to a few more pokes and pricks. Well, what if I... Evacuate! Deeds, calm down. What if I... If I... If I... If I... Deeds, calm down.

I was just faking. Why? Why would you do a thing like that? You talk about this thing in here like you were outside of it. I just wanted you to get a little taste of what it's like on the inside. How'd you like it? Is he happy with any of his theatrical release? I think so.

I think there have been, I think I know he loved I know he loved Misery. Yeah, Misery's good. Shawshank. Stand By Me, Shawshank. I mean, there are some great ones. Dolores Claiborne's good. Dolores Claiborne, The Dead Zone, Carrie,

the first one was the one that made his career. So there are a bunch of really good Stephen King adaptations out there. It's just that I think there have been close to 60 of them. So the batting average is going to be tough no matter what. Oh, yeah. Yeah. I like Sleepwalkers, too. I have to tell you.

That's the first one that was not based on an existing story or book. Well, how did you guys—we'll get this out of the way, too— how did you guys come to start working together? You've collaborated, what, seven, eight times now? Yeah, something like that. The first time was Sleepwalkers, and I was asked to go to a meeting at Columbia Pictures. They were doing the movie, and we had a great meeting,

and they said, you know, we would love you to do this. We have to take another meeting as a favor to an agent that we work with closely. And so they had that other meeting and gave it to that other director. And so I thought that was the end of it until I got a call that the other director wanted to turn it into something entirely different and rewrite King's original screenplay and in ways that nobody was particularly happy with, including a planet of sleepwalkers that he had written into it. And so they asked me to come and have lunch and talk about it. And what I didn't know is that after lunch, they were moving me into my office. So that's how I got the job. He had seen Psycho 4, which I had directed for Showtime.

And both of these have themes of mother-son incest. Please don't tell my mother. We're going to tell her, Mick. Oh, God. Well, she's passed away. Oh, okay. Yeah. We're safe.

But he really liked Psycho 4. It was a movie that no one would expect to like with a number four in the title. And so he had director approval, and we started working together from a distance. He was in Maine, and we would talk on the phone and never really met until he came to Hollywood to shoot. He was there for two hours on the set where we shot his cameo with Clive Barker and Toby Hooper all in this one scene, which the movie would not be affected in any way if I'd cut it out. And John Landis.

And John Landis and Joe Dante. That's right, and Joe. Forgive me for getting him. It's also the only movie I've ever seen where someone is stabbed to death with corn on the cob. Oh, that's right. Yes. We call it the cobbing.

Yeah. Good performances. Stephen King, just to make it about me. Stephen King wrote an entire page review of my Shudini commercial. of my my Shudini commercial. If he likes something, he'll let people know. So I felt like that was a legendary moment

in my career. Stephen King. He wrote about your Shudini commercial. Does Mick know what the Shudini is? Maybe you should explain it. Yeah, I did the voiceover for this. It was one of these infomercials. Now the Shudini, I think it still might be on the market.

It was basically a shoehorn with a retractable handle. And they would show at the beginning these old people trying to put on or take off their shoes. And they were all sadly and frighteningly falling to the floor. Now, there are some cynics out there might go, well, why didn't they just sit down while putting their shoes on? But no, no, the Shudini was there for them. And so Stephen King felt compelled to write an essay about the Shudini. Yes, he wrote all about it for Entertainment Weekly. We have him on record as calling you an American treasure.

Yes. Fair enough. Now, how have I lived my entire life without a Shudini? I don't know You're missing out, Mick Well, you gotta get a little bit older And the first time you fall down Tying your shoes

Then you'll see the importance Go to Shudini.com right now I'd like to say too that before we start I'll tell our listeners, we had Drew Friedman here, and Mick revealed that he was a fan of Drew's, and they chatted briefly, and George Zucco immediately became a part of the conversation. The giant claw. Yeah.

I'll tell you what kind of show this is. We did a whole episode. It was a shorter episode, a mini episode. We did the whole thing about George Zucco. I think that's worth a miniseries, Frank. Yeah. So you share our obsessions. Absolutely.

And I'm a huge Drew Friedman fan. I mean, I remember his his Tor Johnson cartoons, his Shemp cartoons. Oh, yeah. I'm a huge, huge fan of his work. He's got a new book of portraits out, which is why we had him on the show. And he was kind enough to put Gilbert and I in the book. Oh, how great. And George Zuko, there was later on, I forget who made it, one of those schlock movie makers.

And I forget his name now. The movie Q. Oh, Larry Cohen. Yeah, yeah. I don't think it was Larry Cohen. Oh, Larry Cohen. Yeah, yeah. I don't think it was Larry Cohen. We love Larry Cohen. Yeah. Larry Cohen definitely made Q.

But I don't think he's worked with George Zuko. No, they're different eras. No, but it was Q was the second, was like a remake of a George Zuko. Oh, of the giant claw. Yes, yes. Oh, the one he just referenced. Yes. Quetzalcoatl is what Q stands for.

Yes. So the giant claw, yeah, which I believe, well, most of the George Zucco movies were monogram. I'm not sure if that was. It might have even been sub-monogram. I'm not sure. He was like the poor man's Karloff. Yeah, basically Boris Karloff. Or even the poor man's Karloff. Yeah, basically Boris Karloff. Or even the poor man's Peter Lorre. Yes.

And I think he played Moriarty once, didn't he? Oh, I'm not sure. I think you're right. I think he did. I'm not sure which one. I think he did. There were a lot of them. Do a little of your Lorre for Mick, since we got a captive audience.

No, it was you who banded it. You and your stupid attempt to buy it. Kevin found out how valuable it was. You idiot. You bloated fathead. That's perfect. I envy your talents. The kids can't get enough peter lorry impressions i heard a story that george zucco when he was like really old and his health was poor

uh george zucco's wife drove him there because he couldn't drive anymore. So George Zuko, this was too sad. She drove George Zuko to Ed Wood's office to ask Ed Wood if he was working on something that he could put George into. Oh, wow. And at the time, they didn't have anything they were working on. And I mean, that, I don't think, that's one of those tragic Hollywood stories. Incredibly tragic. I mean, I think Ed Wood paid in sandwiches or something. Oh, yeah.

Yeah. Do you know Bob Burns, Mick? Yes. Yeah. The Oh, yeah. Yeah. Do you know Bob Burns, Mick? Yes. Yeah, the great Bob Burns. Yeah, we had him on the show a couple of weeks ago, and he was friends with Ed Wood, and he told some very sweet stories. He liked him. Liked him a lot, lent him money at the end.

It was really heartwarming. Yeah, people who knew him seemed to like him, and Bob used to do every Halloween, he would take all of these props from famous horror movies and the like and have a theme night and people would line up to go through his house and look at like a diorama built from the creature from the Black Lagoon and a guy would be in the original suit and an alien and all of these things. And every year there'd be a line around the block in Bob Burns's Burbank neighborhood.

Oh, yeah. Go through these. And he used to put on those live horror shows. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. To go along with the movie that they were showing. And now while Gilbert heads into the nutmeg kitchen to steal more Perrier, a word from our sponsor.

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Must be 19 or older. Ontario only. Please pay responsibly. If you or someone you know has concerns about gambling, visit ConnectsOntario.ca. So how did you become a monster kid in the first place, Mick? You grew up in L.A.? Yeah, I was born in L.A., but none of my friends were monster kids. I think most of the people who are drawn to it in their youth are outcasts. I don't think people who write horror novels, make horror films and the like, were the president of the ASB or class president or prom queen or anything like that. Now, me, on the other hand, I was a football hero and I got all the pussy in school. Wait a minute.

What's that story about when you knew you were going to be, when the teacher gave you an assignment? The teacher. I think it was like kindergarten or first grade, may have been kindergarten. She was playing a game with us where she'd give us initials and we had to think of someone famous with those initials. Like she'd say M.M. and then, you know, Mickey Mouse or B.H. Oh, I'm Bob Hope. And and she said, oh, yes.

And I'm there and I'm like three years old. And and very excitedly, I leapt up and yelled, I'm slow. Stevens. He was the mad doctor, among other things. He was the mad doctor among other things he was the mad doctor in house of dracula so you were one of these outcasts yes nobody else knew that yeah you i was ashamed to be in their presence i'm trying to prove your outcast theory, Mick. Well, yeah, here we go. I don't think most of us were football captains,

but now that horror has become more mainstreamed, I don't know that that's still true, but it certainly was in my youth. What was your local theater? Because we asked Dante, and he had one in New Jersey, where you'd go to see these things. The Reseda Drive-In, which was, my family would go. It's where I saw Psycho when it came out when I was seven years old. Your parents took you to Psycho when you were seven?

Yeah, there were four of us, and two of my siblings were younger than me. That explains a lot. It does, believe me. And the Peter Bogdanovich, Boris Karff movie Targets was shot at the Reseda. Oh, yes. We love that. So that was my neighborhood movie house. Also, getting back to like horror fans and outcasts, somewhere along the way, it became very popular for like, you know, gorgeousuit and lingerie models to go oh well in school i was

the biggest nerd i don't know when that became yeah and you'll see these gorgeous girls like oh yeah yeah i could see her being really unpopular. Well, it was before the surgeries. Yeah. They're lying through their teeth. Your parents took you to Psycho. Yes, it was a very nurturing family. Yeah, there were four Garris kids, and they were two younger than me. And we went in the car to the drive-in, and four years after that,

we would go to my sister, who was the youngest of all mrs bates mrs bates and then turn around in a chair with a dead face and and it was a delight and then later on you would work with anthony perkins it was kind of amazing how weird to do to direct the fourth psycho movie which had a screenplay by Joe Stefano, who wrote the first Psycho. Right, right, right. And to work with Tony Perkins. And although we shot it in Orlando, they shipped a lot of the props from the original movie, like the bed that mother was from mother's bedroom with the dip in the shape of her body. That was shipped out from Hollywood. And a lot of the props from the original movie, bed alone was was insured for a hundred thousand dollars and uh interesting

Perkins actually wanted to direct Psycho 4 uh and the studio's experience Psycho 3 was not very successful financially or critically and so they wouldn't let him do it. So you can imagine how thrilled he was when they said, meet your director. His last movie was Critters 2. I don't think he was really, that gave him a lot of confidence. Oh, so you had some issues with him, did you? Well, not because of that, but I know he wanted to make the movie. They wouldn't let him. And here is this young guy who had done one feature film before.

Right. But John Landis was a good friend of Tony's and spoke on my behalf. And the studio was very enthusiastic because, as you had mentioned earlier, I'd worked for Steven Spielberg on Amazing Stories. And that helped oil the machine a little bit. So did you eventually become kind of like friends or anything? Well, it was a complicated shoot. And he had very specific ideas and would get into wordplay battles

and test me to make sure I wasn't just shooting shots that looked cool, but that there was an actual thought process behind what I was doing with the visuals and with how I would work with the actors and the like. So he ran me through my paces, but the justification finally came. It was a very short shoot, only four weeks long, but we screened it for him finished at the Alfred Hitchcock Theater at Universal Studios. And it all worked out great because he loved the movie and went on for like 10 minutes how it was the best of the sequels and better than the one he had done. And it was like embarrassing at a certain point. But he was challenging, but only for the good reasons,

only because he cared. This was a character he created and saw through three previous films, had worked with the greatest filmmakers in the world, Orson Welles, Alfred Hitchcock, William Wyler, all of these great people. And here was the guy doing Critters 2. So there was a little bit of a proving ground that had to be maintained. I remember in one of the sequels, it may have been Psycho 2, where, you know, the mother came back, her corpse, of course. And but it was a different corpse. Hmm. Yeah, they had changed the corpse.

It wasn't the corpse from the first one. Interesting. Wow. I guess she had Botox. We copied the original one, and Olivia Hussey played Mother because it's a flashback and flash. She's very good, by the way.

So is Henry Thomas. They're very good, by the way. So is Henry Thomas. They're such good actors. Both good. They really did a great job. And I have the corpse of the one-year-dead Olivia sitting in my office at home. And the people across the street, they had the mother-in-law visiting from Israel. And you can see into the window of my office. and she called the police because there was a dead woman. Fantastic.

And I got to tell you, somebody tweeted me and said to me, I'm a big fan of yours, and so is Olivia Hussey. Wow. Yeah. Because I remember she played Juliet in Romeo and Juliet, didn't she? Absolutely. When she was 15 years old. Yeah. Is the pseudonym, the name that Norman uses when he calls the radio station, it's Ed?

It's Ed. Is that a reference to who Norman Bates? There you go. Okay. Yes. Ed Gein, the famous serial killer. Yeah. Well, I watched the movie again last night and that was bugging me.

And I said, okay, ask Mick. Yeah. That's a connection. It is indeed. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, here's two daunting things you've done. I mean, doing the research and you talk about, you know, your naivete when you take out The

Shining, you're also taking on Psycho. Well, the good thing about Psycho was that there had been two sequels and 30 years between the original and mine. And it was being made for Showtime, which at that time was nowhere near as big as HBO then. So if it did well, 99% of America wouldn't have seen it and they'd have heard, wow, you should see Psycho 4. Oh, but I can't. And if it sucked, then nobody heard about it. So it was a little easier and more low profile. But the fact that Joe Stefano wrote the script and that Tony Perkins played the lead and all, I think helped. And, you know, it's a much better movie than people anticipated that it would turn out to be. It's good. And it is funny. Showtime used to be like the lesser of all of those premium channels.

Definitely. There were kind of only two of them at the time, and there was HBO, and then, oh, yeah, there was Showtime. Yeah. Yeah. And you did a series for Showtime. Tell us about it. Masters of Horror. Which is very good. Thank you. The whole idea of that was just going to a lot of,

not all of them were my friends, but most of them were people who were really, had high achievements in the horror genre and saying to them, look, we don't have a whole lot of money. We don't have a whole lot of time. But you have complete creative control of whatever you want to do for a one-hour show. If we can do it in that time and budget, you have complete creative control. You have final cut and everything. And it was something that I think led to a lot of these people from John Carpenter to John Landis to Toby Hooper to just so many – Tom Holland.

Peter Miedek. Peter Miedek who did The Changeling, which is one of my favorites. Ours too. They were able to escape kind of the straitjacket that they'd been under when they worked for studios and the like. And they really – they blossomed under that freedom, and they did some really tremendous work, and we were able to do some kind of groundbreaking stuff on that show. You called everybody together for a dinner, and do I have the story right?

Was it Stuart Gordon? Somebody was celebrating a birthday, and the name Masters of Horror just came out? Basically, that's sort of it. Okay. A group of us, because we know each other and we're in the genre, And the name Masters of Horror just came out? Basically, that's sort of it. Okay. A group of us, because we know each other and we're in the genre, we'll meet each other at various film festivals or conventions and things like that. And everybody would always say, you know, we ought to get together for dinner sometime and joke about it.

After a couple of years of that, I realized nobody would do that unless I took it on myself. And so I spent about a week trying to get people's schedules together. And we had a dozen filmmakers in the horror genre come together for a dinner in the San Fernando Valley. It was me. It was John Carpenter, Toby Hooper, Guillermo del Toro, Stuart Gordon, Don Coscarelli, just a dozen really great filmmakers. And at the table next to us was somebody's birthday. And they were singing happy birthday and we joined in. And at the end, Guillermo del Toro stood up and said, The Masters of Horror wish you a very happy birthday.

I love it. That was the birth of our name. I had the wrong director, but I have seen the pictures online. There are photographs of you guys all sitting there at the tables. It's a very impressive gathering. That started about probably close to 15 years ago, and we just had one a week and a half, two weeks ago to celebrate Toby Hooper, who was a very close friend and just a great guy.

And we hadn't been together for two years. We hadn't had a dinner in the last one before that was to celebrate, to raise a glass to Wes Craven, who was also a member of this small fraternity. Yeah, great talents. I remember the reason I eventually went to Toby Hooper's house is because he directed Life Force. Oh, you liked that movie. Well, what I liked about it was Matilda May was a girl space vampire, and she was naked through the whole movie. And so I had to go.

So he invited me to his house, and he had a big screen, and he put on Life Force. And I whacked it that night later on. I think a lot of young men achieve maturation with Life Force. She looked amazing in that. Holy cow. Yeah. At what point does he spring for lunch? That was, I think it was the same evening.

Okay. He sprung for lunch. What a guy. And you sprung otherwise. I got dinner and sex out of it. Better than any of my dates with women. better than any of my dates with women. So Masters of Horror was kind of a dream project, Mick, for you. It was.

I mean, you know, working with Stephen King, obviously, is like one of the greatest opportunities in the world. But to do this and to not only be able to do something I wanted without interference, but to grant these great filmmakers the opportunity to tell stories they wanted to tell the way they wanted to tell them was amazing. We did it for two years. We made 26 episodes and I'm so proud of every one of them. And I think all of them really felt like they got a chance to flex muscles that they had not in quite a while. And when did you first become a Lon Chaney Jr. fan?

Well, I actually, when I saw The Wolfman, you know, probably the same way you did late at night on the local TV channel. For me, it was Channel 5 in L.A. For you, it might have been Channel 9. Yeah, I think Channel 9 had a little Universal. And my grandmother actually was – she was a seamstress here and she made dresses for Gale Storm and people like that. But the only kind of affiliation in the show business that the rest of my family never was exposed to. family never was exposed to. But she had a picture that is on my wall now that she was friendly with Lon Chaney Jr.'s housekeeper when he was Creighton Chaney. So I have an autographed picture to this

woman from Creighton T. Chaney. Wow. Yeah. So I have that. And Joe Dante actually used it in the howling in one of the scenes. Oh, there's that scene on the desk. We would just, I just mentioned that on the show. That's my picture. Well, that whole movie puts in all those in-jokes, all those werewolf in-jokes. That's when she's talking to Robert Picardo. And on the desk, there's a Cheney photo. That's the one, yeah.

And I thought. I'm going to give you a piece of my mind, yeah. And I was, and that's also this great line, you know me, but I don't know you. Oh, no, that's when he's talking to the guy. You know me, but I don't know you. Why is that that bright boy and yeah I have

through famous monsters I found that Lon Chaney Jr. wasn't feeling well and they gave an address you could send him a get well note and I sent him a get well card and I got back a little photo of the Wolfman signed Lon Chaney. Wow.

Yeah. I still have it. I've got it framed on my wall. Wow. I remember famous monsters very well. They had a master monster maker contest with the Aurora monster models when I was a kid. Oh yes.

Yes. We just talked talking about that one. I won a plaque that was on my wall for, for doing a customized version of the mummy. I think I was the only person at the Woolworths in my neighborhood who submitted anything. So, um, wow. The competition was not steep, but yeah, I was a big, big famous monsters guy and got to know Forry Ackerman pretty well and went to the Acker Mansion several times, which I'm sure you must have done, Gil.

I was there twice. Second time, he wasn't well at all. But, yeah, I remember he took me on a tour. And I saw, like, they were all, like, rotted and everything. Yeah. And you could see the insides. But the dinosaurs from King Kong. Yeah.

Yeah. And. Willis O'Brien stuff. Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And. Bob Burns used to watch him work. I guess you know that.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, Bob and his gorilla suit are ever working in the day. Oh, yes. What was it, Kogar? Kogar.

We love Bob. Such a sweet man. Very nice guy. And I've never been to Bob's house. I have to make a trip there. When you get out there. Yeah, you must come out and visit Casa Burns.

What happened to the Ackerman Mansion stuff? I mean, did Bob take most of it? Did it go into the museum? A museum, I should say. It went into a collection. I think that there was a private auction or there is going to be. I think there was a big auction that sold off a lot of the stuff. I know my friend Bill Malone, who did the remake of House on Haunted Hill, was one of the masters of horror.

He did Fear.com. He owned Robbie the Robot and his car, and he still does, and a lot of set pieces from Alien and Star Wars and all of these things. And he loaned them out to Bob Burns for those Halloween shows. and all of these things. And he loaned them out to Bob Burns for those Halloween shows. But I know, speaking of all this great stuff going out to auction, his Robbie the Robot is about to go out to auction through TCM. But I would go over to Bill's house often and be able to see. It was in perfect shape, too.

He would do personal appearances in it and do TV spots in the original Robbie costume and all of that. And then became a director himself and kept it. And I imagine it will keep him through his dotage once that's sold. How nice. And I think, though, a lot of people, especially toward the end, were stealing stealing stuff from the Acre Mansion. I'm afraid that's true. Forrey, the last few years of his life, was pretty much restricted to a wheelchair and oxygen tanks, things like that. And, you know, people did take advantage of his frailness and his collection because he was not very protective.

He was always quite welcoming to people to come and look at all these great pieces of cinema history. He wasn't so public with his pornography collection that was in a back room. But he did have one. Now, I heard and I may have even seen the letter. There was one letter kept from some woman who Fari Ackerman sent a dirty letter to. Oh, I don't know about it. It was written in the style of famous monsters. Like famous monsters.

You know too much. Yes. Famous monsters would have a picture of the wolf man and go, oh, he's wolfing down his food. Or he's a real mummy's boy. Or Dracula is going a little batty. You know, that kind of. Or Harwood Carlaw Fonya was a popular one. Yeah.

So I heard he had, man, I may have seen this. He wrote a letter to some girl that he was trying to get in her pants. And it was like, let's keep abreast of the situation. Ooh. let's keep abreast of the situation. I'm sure it got him all the way to home base, right? There is no other podcast in the world, Mick, talking about Forrest Ackerman's sexual peccadillos.

Better peccadillos than armadillos. Right, that's right. Let's not blow this. Tell us about, you know, we jump around like crazy, but tell us about, write down the names of some of the people you worked with. I mean, Ray Walston in The Stand, who we love. I mean, part of the love of this

show is we love to talk about great character actors. Well, Ray was terrific. He was also very eccentric, and it was very bright and sunny in the locations where we were much of the time. And Ray would wear glasses that he had put black tape over because he felt that his eyes had suffered too much from stage lights from his Broadway and stage work back in the earlier days of his career. So he would walk around with these blind man glasses that were taped over and be relaxing this way. And he would get really cranky. I do remember reading when I was a little boy in TV Guide about Ray Walston being attacked by a chimpanzee on My Favorite Martian. Wow.

And mauling his face. Oh. And that memory stuck with me, so I asked him about it, and he said, that little motherfucker. I was talking about this wicked chimp. That's great. But he would get cranky sometimes, and, you know and I would bust him on it. I'd say, boy, somebody got up on the wrong side of the bed today.

And he'd go, oh, oh, oh, and it would bring him back to earth. But he was really wonderful. He studied. He knew everybody's lines in this thing, not just his own. Old pro. But, yeah, there are very few people of his age at that time who would not only know their own lines, but somebody would be saying something

that was meant to cue him in, and he'd chastise them for getting it wrong because it was his cue. So he knew everybody's lines in the scene, but he was fantastic and really just such a one-of-a-kind, you know, Uncle Martin, but playing a cranky old man. Amy Heckerling told us he was a little eccentric too. Best times at Ridgemont High she worked with. Yeah.

Oh, Mr. Hand. Yeah. Chimps are horrible animals. I've heard so many stories about that. I would rather get thrown in a lion's cage than a cage of chimps. Chimps, they look cute on TV. I think Danny Bonaduce told us a chimp attacked him. Not on The Partridge Family, on another show where he was working as a child actor.

Patty Duke or I'll check. One of these shows and he had a bad experience with a chimp. They're horrible creatures. They bit horrible. What about William Shallert? Somebody we tried hard to get on. We tried so hard to get him on this show and it went, it just dragged out for weeks and we wound up passing. Well, yeah, he was 90 years old when he did bag of bones with us. And, uh, you know, I was a fan of his from childhood, you know, from the Patty Duke show and everything. But he was such a pro, but he got very embarrassed because he was at a stage in his life where he was starting to forget lines. And at 90 years old, that's very excusable.

Of course. But, you know, I offered to, you know, put cue cards up, something like that, and he wouldn't have it. He was too much of a pro and he was too embarrassed to do that. But I told him, you know, you're a great actor. We love your face. We love your delivery and everything. If you don't mind, I will just feed you lines. I won't give any performance into it, just so you have the words. And then, you know, Bill Shower does this through his performance. And at first he resisted it. And, you know, but he got really angry with himself because he had such high standards for his work. And so everybody was really encouraging. Pierce Brosnan was the star of the movie and he worked with him as well. And it was just, everybody was so great

on that and he was fantastic. And finally it relaxed him to be able to hear what the lines were and to just then perform them and not, you know, not have them fed as a line reading, but just what the words were. And he was fantastic. And once you edit it together, there are scenes that you look at it and, I mean, you see why he had a career from the 1940s into the 2000s. He did everything. Everything.

I mean, go back to those Twilight Zone episodes, but he worked constantly. And he was equally good in both light comedy and drama. Absolutely. And he played a villain in Bag of Bones, and he played it so well. I mean, he was really nasty. And he has a suicide, an assisted suicide in a bathtub in Bag of Bones that was really difficult to do because it's a bag over his head and he's breathing in and here's this frail 90-year-old man in a bathtub set. And it was really difficult to watch.

And it was only, I think, a year or two after we made the movie that he did pass away. Yeah, we tried like hell to get him here. Such a great actor. Another name that I have to mention, and back in the days when you were doing your interviews for the Z Channel in L.A., and I found them. I'm so glad you preserved them.

I know they were on, what, beta all these years? Yeah, they were Betamax recordings. They're so good. I mean, there's William Fred, Mick did interviews. Were you in your 20s? Yeah, yeah. Eddie? I was a kid.

William Friedkin and Jackie Cooper and a very young Spielberg after Close Encounters. But also, and I didn't find this one online. Did you interview Christopher Lee? I did, but I don't have any tapes of it. Those were recorded off of the cable just on my home Betamax machine because I didn't have access to the masters and they were destroyed once the channel was sold. It became part of Time Warner, which is now Spectrum. And yeah, I did Christopher Lee and William Shatner. And know it was it was really exciting we basically showed films on the Z channel which was the first pay TV channel in LA and I would interview uh people who had done the

films the genre films on the fantasy film festival so we had Spielberg talk about Close Encounters we had Christopher Lee on with the Wicker Man we had William Shatner with a Star Trek movie. So great. And it was, I mean, thrilling for me. Oh, yeah, Douglas Trumbull. You had Harlan Ellison. I mean. Yeah, yeah. It was really quite a learning experience for me. And, you know, hopefully that's why I do the podcast now,

because I still want to be evolving and learning from all of these great, the wisdom of the people I admire. Well, I was touched by something that you said that, that here you are, you're a kid, you're in your twenties, but you're meeting these people. And you, you, you had a realization that, you know, these aren't giants. They're just people like me who love movies. Yeah. Regular folks. They're regular folks who are supremely talented and were able to help create the language of the films that we love so much and filmmaking. You know, you talk to Toby Hooper about the making of Texas Chainsaw Massacre and you learn a lot about what are standard techniques today that he kind of invented in his day or Wes Craven about Nightmare on Elm Street or William Friedkin about The Exorcist. And, you know, he was very upset. We actually

couldn't run the Friedkin interview back then because I also interviewed the director, John Borman, of Exorcist II, which Friedkin kept referring to as the hairy tick. And he was so... I've heard that he hates that sequel. He hates it, and he called us horrible for running it, and he was potentially libelous about it. Wow. And so Z Channel would not air the show, and he would not agree for it to be edited. So it never showed up anywhere until I put it on the interview website.

And so that's kind of the only place it's ever been is at MickGarrisInterviews.com. The Exorcist is one of those films that it seems like there were a hundred sequels to The Exorc, and each one worse than the other. And a lot of them weren't official Exorcist sequels. Yes. Didn't Blatty make one himself later on? Blatty did the third one. Yeah, the third one. Exorcist 3, which has gone through a lot of reevaluation lately.

A lot of people really admire the movie, and I think it's pretty good myself. Yeah. Yeah. Hey, boy, didn't you have him on post-mortem uh friedkin again recently friedkin was yeah but you didn't bring it up you didn't make the mistake of bringing it up again did you i did you know it's history it was uh you know 30 years later so um yeah and friedkin is a great interview because he doesn't hold back. There's no reason for him not to be completely open because what's anybody going to do to him?

Of course. I don't know if you've had him on the show or not, but he's really great. We want to. I think you'd really love talking to him. We want to. Watch The Rush. Listen, I love Sorcerer to death.

That's one of my favorite movies. Me too. Me too. I mean, I know it's a remake, but it's a damn good one. That was with Roy Scheider. Yeah, it's a remake of Wages of Fear, but it's frigging fantastic. I like The Night They Raided Minsky's. I like all his pictures.

Yeah. Have you seen Bug? I mean, that was the first time I saw Michael Shannon. And it's a great film. Tell us, now, I was told by our mutual friend, Sean Marek, who set up this interview and we thank Sean and we will also plug your podcast again before we wrap up. But Sean sent me an email and said, you got to ask Mick the Betty Davis story. Oh, well, it's not all that good a story. Oh, okay. When I was working for Star Wars, my first job was answering phones for the original Star Wars. And I was the receptionist.

But I also operated R2-D2 at the Oscars that year. I love that. The only time in my life I ever have been or will be at the Oscars. So I was operating the R2-D2 robot. the Oscars. So I was operating the R2-D2 robot and I'm back in the green room while the show is going on as Jack Nicholson is leering at the transparent wardrobe that Olivia Newton-John was wearing. So I'm just watching all of this magic Hollywood taking place around me in a very transformative time of old and new Hollywood. So this is 1978. And in the back room, like I said, Jack Nicholson,

there was Betty Davis, all these stars from different generations. And I was in the green room surrounded by all these people in my tuxedo and my remote control for the R2-D2 robot when they announced the best actress. And it was Diane Keaton for Annie Hall. Oh, Annie Hall, yeah. And Betty Davis was aghast. She said, I don't believe it.

I don't believe it. That's the story. Why was she so pissed off about Annie Hall winning? Well, I guess, you know, it was not so much a performance as just a real life kind of actor's role. It didn't feel active. She came from a very gilded period of Hollywood. Of course. You know, a best actress is somebody who does something big

and something grand and something remarkable. Yeah, Mildred Pierce. Yeah, Mildred Pierce, for example. Right. And this was so grounded in this, you know, very kind of modern and sloppy clothes and something other than the Hollywood machine. Did you operate R2-D2? I think we may have a connection to another one of our podcast guests. Did you operate R2-D2? I think we may have a connection to another one of our podcast guests. Did you operate R2-D2 in the infamous Star Wars holiday special? I did. Oh, geez. We had Steve Binder here on the show.

Oh, wow. Okay. I am the Zelig of horror. That's quite a claim. Wow. That's a very cool thing. I was there, yes. And I saw that, shall I call it a masterpiece? It's a, well, I'll tell you, it's something.

You were, what a thing to be on the set for. I know. You know, when you've got R2-D2 and Bea Arthur in the same scene. We talked. Oh, gee. I mean, Steve has a sense of humor about it, you know? Well, you have to. Yeah.

Yeah. Now, getting back to our favorite actor, I think the earliest horror film I remember watching is The Indestructible Man. Oh, yeah. With Lon Chaney Jr. And we were talking about this recently. Also, Robert Shane, who was the inspector from Superman, and Joe Flynn from McHale's Navy. Oh, from McHale's Navy.

They were the two mad scientists. Wow. Yeah, I haven't seen that one since I was a kid. But The Indestructible Man and Man-Made Monster. Oh, yes, yes. What did Ron Chaney tell us? You must know this, Mick, the story about him dying at birth or being plunged into the ice. Lunged into the ice?

Yeah, they said he was born dead and that his father grabbed him and ran to the lake in Colorado there where it's freezing. And he breaks through the ice and dips his son in to shock him into life. Oh, and it worked, obviously. Ron Chaney told us this. Oh, and it worked, obviously. Ron Chaney told us this. But a lot of – I've also read that Lon Chaney Jr. could be, when he wasn't drunk, also full of shit and he would make up stories. I've heard that too. And Rick Baker, the famous makeup artist and other friends of his who did that kind of work back when they were kids in Hollywood, they would spot him on a street corner and want his autograph and he'd ask

them for money for drinks and stuff. Oh my God. Wow. Yeah. Yeah. And I don't know if I doubt that Ron talked about this at all and I don't know Ron, but it was quite well known that he was one of the best-hung actors in Hollywood.

Lon Chaney Jr.? Oh, stop the presses. Oh, this is a stop the presses. Nick, you just became his favorite guest. Wow. Out of 170. So, added along to, of course, Milton Berle, the king. That's right. Boris Tucker, Guy Marks, Milton Berle, the king. That's right.

Forrest Tucker, Guy Marks. Guy Marks, the comedian. Ah, okay, yeah. And someone, and just our previous guest, told us Willem Dafoe. Willem Dafoe. I don't know. Yeah, I don't know. That's what we hear.

Well, he's done nude scenes, so we'll see. Yeah, you can check that out. Blonde Chaney Jr.? Yeah. Wow. Where did you come up with this? This is good stuff. Who told you?

This was, I heard this from, maybe I shouldn't credit to these people, but I mentioned people who were makeup artists in the industry who learned these things about him. I don't know how they learned. Wow, Gilbert, this has made your year. This is great. This is a great story. Schlong Chaney. Yeah, that's what they called him? Schlong Chaney. Gilbert's so happy. But they'd ask him for his autograph and he'd ask him for money for booze.

Yeah, yeah. To walk him over to a bar and and things like that i mean it's sad it is sad because you know he did have he was always in the shadow of his father and he was so proud of creating his own makeup in 1940 for 1 million bc but um you know they wouldn't allow it because he wasn't an official makeup man exactly and and he was not talented and gifted in the same way that his father was who kind of created how all of this stuff was done. And he never really – other than of Mice and Men and there are a couple other examples of opportunities to play really tender, sensitive, high-level roles. He was always consigned to the B pictures. And, you know, his name was Creighton Chaney, not Lon Chaney Jr.,

but the studio forced that on him because it would sell more tickets. It would make him famous. He gives a very good performance out of Mice and Men. An amazing performance. Yeah. That was his greatest. Yeah.

You think of him from horror films. I mean, you know, you think of him from cheesy horror films, but he really gave a great performance. Yeah. That was his greatest. Yeah. You think of him from horror films. I mean, you know, you think of him from cheesy horror films, but he really gave a great performance. And his one scene in High Noon. Oh, yes. He's in High Noon, too. Yeah, that's right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But now he had the ability, just the opportunities that were given to him were, like I say, the

genre has always been thought of as kind of a gutter genre and not given much respect by the studios. And he certainly suffered from that. And he was in there was a TV show, I think it was called Telephone Line. And there was an episode called The Golden Junkman. Bob Burns told us about this. And I saw that. Someone sent it to me. And he plays like a Greek junkman.

And it was similar to later on Rodney Dangerfield doing Back to School. Right. Where he goes to the same college as his sons. And he plays like a Greek junk man whose sons are embarrassed by him. And he goes to their college to prove that he can graduate. And it's really a fine performance. Well, Bob Burns told us when he met him, he singled out that performance. And he said Cheney was so moved that he got up out of the chair and he came over to Bob and he wrapped his arms around him and he hugged him. Yeah, he said Cheney had tears, got tears in his eyes and hugged him.

I mean, how great to be in a position where your career is not what it used to be. And to have someone recall something that not many people were familiar with and to tell him how great he was in it. I bet that was really an important time of his life. I'm sure. And especially like respected stuff he's done. Yeah. Yeah. Let's talk a little bit about Amazing Stories. Sure. And how Steven Spielberg was the first person to basically hire you as a writer. Yeah, what I learned many years later that I was the first writer hired for Amazing Stories. Steven was one of my guests on the Z Channel show. Right. And he really enjoyed doing it.

He said with quite a bit of surprise afterwards, I really had fun doing this. And that's not something he normally had when he was doing publicity interviews and things. So our paths crossed later when I was doing specialized publicity at Universal for E.T. and The Thing. And, you know, it was 1982, which was an amazing year for the genre. American Werewolf in London had just come out in 81. And so I hired myself to do making of documentaries on a lot of these films. Oh yeah. You did one for the fog too, right? Yeah. For the fog, for the, yeah, lots of those things. And, um, I was doing the making of, uh, the Goonies on the first day of shooting up in Astoria,

Oregon, and we're setting up the lights to interview Steven about it. And he said, ah, you must do a lot of these things these days. Uh, and I had not been doing many, uh, because I was trying to put full time into becoming a screenwriter. And I told him, you know, I'm, I don't know how I managed to tell him this because I was very shy about being one of those assholes with a script in their back pocket. But told him that, you know, I was trying to make a go of it as a writer. And he said, oh, I didn't know you were a writer. Yeah, what kind of stuff do you do? And we just talked about it. And coincidentally, my agents at the time had sent a spec script of mine to them because of amazing stories. And when he got home from this trip, apparently the coverage was incredibly good.

And it was. I got a copy of it well after the fact. And the last three words were, hire this man. And so because he knew me and through this other way of doing it, through publicity and through doing interviews with him, he read this coverage, read the script, and they called me up and asked me if I would come in and meet with them and write one of the episodes. He gave all the storylines for the first 22 episodes. And so I went home, wrote one in three days, took it back, and called me a day and a half into doing another one and asked me if I would go on staff as the story editor or the Rob Petrie of Amazing Stories. How nice.

So it was an opportunity that I – literally I was on food stamps at the time. And then I went from food stamps to Spielberg and other studios and, and networks and executives who had never read anything of mine, just left it on the slush pile. They still didn't read anything, but they were offering me jobs because I'd been knighted by King Stephen. Wow. From,

from food stamps to, uh, the first staff writer hired on Amazing Stories on a New Network project. Yeah, by the most successful filmmaker of all time. And what's Steven Spielberg like to work with? Thrilling. You know, he loves the work. He loves making movies and, you know, incredibly supportive. You know, being on the set and

watching him work was an astonishing experience. And, you know, he wanted to make sure when he offered me my opportunity to direct an episode that he had me storyboard the whole half hour show and go over it with him. And the greatest film school I ever had was two hours in Stephen's office going over the storyboards that we'd had prepared. Oh boy, fantastic. That was four years of film school in two hours. And just an amazing experience and incredibly encouraging. And I had scripts I wrote directed by Martin Scorsese, Robert Zemeckis. That's wonderful.

All these different people. And it just, it, it, my life changed completely from then until now I've been able to make a living doing what I love since that time. You got to see them work too. You got to see, I know that I read an interview with you and you're talking about watching Scorsese's process. Pretty incredible. Yeah. Go ahead. No. What's Scorsese like?

Very, he clears the set, so you don't get to watch too close. But no one is around while he's working, at least on this Amazing Stories episode. Nobody is around while he's working with the actors. Then he calls in the cameraman and they work things out together. And then everybody comes in and watches. So what I realized, what I learned right off the bat, is how much of directing takes place off the set. You know, how much is in the planning, in the casting, in the talking with the writer, in discussions with your cameraman. All of the plans that are made before you actually come to the set. And I realized in some cases, like with Alfred Hitchcock, he was bored by the time he got to the set

because he'd already shot the movie on paper and in his head. So I see how different... The great thing about that was an anthology series, which is something I've now got quite a lot of experience in, and seeing how different filmmakers would approach their different techniques. You know, directors don't work together. So they don't necessarily, if you're working on an anthology that doesn't have a theme like Twilight Zone or Outer Limits,

they were thematically pretty much you'd look at a Twilight Zone, you'd know it was a Twilight Zone. But with Amazing Stories, they were very broadly defined and they were the first of the director-driven shows. So you'd get Martin Scorsese and you'd encourage him to do Martin Scorsese's filmmaking. You'd get Robert Zemeckis and you'd get him making his kind of movie and Joe Dante doing his.

I was lucky enough to have written one of the two Joe directed. And it was the best film school ever. And Scorsese was a very serious guy. And I remember I'd written a chase scene in a parking lot into this episode. And he said to Stephen and me, you know, I'm not really good at chase scenes. Could we cut this? It was a revelation to me, the master of cinema telling me I'm not very good at chase scenes. What? You mean there's something you're not good at? Not so I would know, you know? Yeah, I love that show. I mean, the diversity of that show. I mean, you could have something like

Family Dog, Brad Bird's. You could have something in animation and a children's one and a thriller like the one you did. Amazing Fallsworth. The Amazing Fallsworth with Gregory Hines, which is great. And they had one where, getting back to famous big penises. Which you're always going to do. Of course. Milton Berle popped up. Oh, he did.

That's right. Mr. Magic. Mr. Magic. Mr. Magic. Yeah. These aliens, they're in love with all the old forgotten performers. Right. That's what Sid Caesar was Mr. Magic. But that one was, yeah, I forget the title of that one. But, yeah, they loved old TV shows because it took years for the signal to get to their planet.

And so when they came to Earth, they sought out the TV stars of the 1950s. And Uncle Miltie was one of them. And they take them at the end on a flying saucer to their planet where they'll be big stars again. Exactly. I like that show, Gilbert. I didn't know you watched it. Oh, yeah. Amazing stories.

And the other one, the Life on Death Row that you directed, also very good. That's the one I was telling you. Thank you. It's the one I was telling you about where we went over the storyboards and everything. So it was in the second season.

And I had directed one thing before for television. It was a Disney Sunday movie called Fuzzbucket. And it showed me how little I knew about directing. And so I feel like Life on Death Row is the first thing I truly directed where I came at it where I think I understood a little more the vocabulary of film and the tools with which you make a film why why me why now i don't have an answer for that one i mean this this this power belongs with someone on the outside not somebody in here waiting to die you know maybe maybe you're not supposed to go around healing the whole world. Just help as many as you can.

What, these guys? You saw the look on Johnny's face when you touched him. When you took away the pain. Yeah, and what good is it gonna do him? Do as much as you can for the others and the time you have. Just take away the pain. Peterson. Warden wants to see you it's very good patrick swayze is a prisoner and he's trying to escape and he's on the fence and it's hit by lightning and he develops the power to heal in his hands and hector alizante is very

good it's very good i'll show it i'm very proud I'll show it to you. I'm very proud of it. I'll show it to Gilbert. Now, also when we had Ileana Douglas on the show, she told me something that kind of, it was kind of sad in a way, you know, not in a major way, but she said that directors, there's no friendship between like Spielberg and Scorsese. They'll be like a polite.

Yeah, and Coppola. They'll be like kind of a politeness between them. But it's all like they know each other's competition and they don't actually like each other well i don't know about that but in the 1970s i know spielberg and lucas and de palma and and others of their their generation were very good friends and they would look at each other's films and make suggestions for their cuts and things like that um and i imagine the ivory tower that comes with huge success is an isolating factor. I'm sure that it stands between close friendships. Living down in the gutter where I live in the genre, you know, the masters of horror,

it's very different. Everybody's very supportive of one another. When we have a dinner and there's 25 of us together in a restaurant, if somebody's got a movie coming out, everybody is really gung-ho for it. They're going to go pay their $12 and see the film and be supportive and wish everyone the best. And, you know, when you are the underdog, you're on a team together. But when you are at the top of the game, think it's it's very much the citizen cane syndrome syndrome yeah i think she said they were friendly but but but in some sense that their competition kind of kind of dominated the relationships diploma too yeah she said was that they they just they were all very aware of of each other's successes. Interesting, yeah. I mean, just what she observed. I did not notice that. Like they were respectful of each other.

Yeah, I'm sure that's true. But, you know, all I ever saw was, in the case of Amazing Stories, Stephen and Scorsese were very friendly toward one another. And it was like they don't get to see each other much. And here was an opportunity for them to intersect. And they really seemed to enjoy it. Yeah. So you were a huge fan of the anthology format.

You worked with Tales of the Crypt. You had your own – two different anthology series, also amazing stories. And do I have this right? You have something coming. Yeah, we just finished shooting, and we're in post-production now on something called Nightmare Cinema, which is, when I finished with Masters of Horror, my dream was to do an anthology where every episode was shot in a different country with a director from that country. And that's what Nightmare Cinema was originally intended to be. I realized that no one else was as ambitious as I was in that regard. So I thought maybe a series of feature films under the Nightmare Cinema umbrella where we could do it that way.

And in 10 years of developing this idea, it finally has come down to we got the opportunity to make a feature film. So five directors, five stories with a wraparound sequence. So Joe Dante and I and a Cuban director named Alejandro Brugues, who did Juan of the Dead, which if you haven't seen it is brilliant. Juan of the Dead. Okay. Yes, it's great. Love the title.

And David Slade, who did the pilots for Hannibal and American Gods. He did 30 Days of Night. He did Hard Candy. Brilliant British director. He did an episode in it. And Ryuhei Kitamura, the Japanese director who did Midnight Meat Train, the Clive Barker movie, and Versus and other Japanese films that are very well known in the genre. The five of us got together. Each of us did a story. I did the wraparound section with Mickey Rourke. And the movie will be out early next year. A couple of companies got together, a company called Good Deed Entertainment financed the development of the script. And one of the writers is from Mexico. Sandra Becerril, it's her first script in English.

Richard Christian Matheson was one of the writers. The filmmakers wrote themselves. Really a great group of people, and hopefully it will launch a series. Nightmare Cinema. Yeah, Cinaloo, which is a production company formed by Mark Canton, who used to run Warner Brothers and then Columbia, and Courtney Solomon, who had After Dark Films. They've collaborated in a company called Cineloo, and they financed the movie. And, you know, they became our angel

after 10 years of trying to put this together. And the hope is that it will not only be a feature film with possible sequels, but to be able to finally do that anthology of international filmmakers. It's great. You know, they used to do those feature anthologies. You don't see them much.

I mean, Creepshow was the last major one I could think of. Reinhaus, I guess. They've done about 500 times try to bring back Twilight Zone, and it never works. Well, they don't have Rod Serling. It was one man's distinctive vision. Just like Outer Limits was one man's vision, too. Same thing. Yeah, and Twilight Zone, maybe it's just not been the right marriage, or maybe it's just not the right time, it's just not been the right marriage or maybe it's just not the right time because it always it was always a morality tale what's and what's your favorite twilight zone episode mick have you

been well can you pick one maybe to serve man it's great it's a great one yeah my my favorite is i think it's called walking distance with gig young oh yeah yeah yeah that's a great one too were you a fan of of um of night gallery speaking of serling and that format i was you know i was still young enough to not be able to discern that it wasn't as good as twilight song right night gallery to me and and there was one station that brought it back and I think they still show it. Yeah, it's on. And I remember even back then, I was disappointed in it. But now, even worse than ever,

it seems like you could show Night Gallery and say this is everything wrong with TV of the 70s. Well, it's interesting because, you know, Serling was just a hired hand on that. He didn't write any of them. He didn't do anything. His introductions were all written for him. He was basically an actor on that show.

So he was not the driving creative force behind Night Gallery the way he was on Twilight Zone. And, you know, I started doing interviews in high school and my first two interviews I ever did were Ray Bradbury and Rod Serling. Wow. And it was really kind of, again, a great education. The reason I still like doing interviews is my quest for knowledge about, you know, how to get better at what I do and just because I love learning, as you do, about the things that you love so much,

this world of the au tre cinema. We love it. You're one of us, Mick. Gooble gobble. And are you a fan of what I like and other people in the cinema world like to call Guinea horror films? Guinea horror. He mocks me because I'm Italian, Mick.

That's what this is about. He's talking about Dario Argento. Nothing that high class. Nothing as high class as Argento. Dr. Butcher, medical deviant. Catch them and kill them. Make them die slowly. Oh, I see.

And Zombie Holocaust. Zombie Holocaust. Zombie Holocaust is a little rough for my taste here and there, you know, because they kill animals. And I'm a vegan. So I'm a vegan horror director. But, no, I'm a huge fan of Italian horror. And in fact, on Sunday, I'm going to be doing a post-mortem live at the American Cinematheque with Dario Argento showing Styria. So I'm very excited about that one.

And Dario did two of the Masters of Horror as well. of horror as well. And I remember, I think it was either zombie or Dr. Butcher where it's listed as the director is something like John Martin. Yes. Right, right. But it's a guy with 17 vowels in his name.

Yes! Yeah, yeah. It's probably Martino or something. Are you a fan of smart, campy horror to make stuff like the Fibes movies? Oh, I love the Fibes movies. Aren't they wonderful? Yeah, Robert Fuest.

Yeah, yeah. Those were really great. Well, and a lot of the amicus movies of the day, the Tales from the Crypt and Vault of Horror and Tales that Witness Madness and Asylum. They had that element of self-deprecation and a little bit of a wink in there as well and a lot of that was like robert block was the writer of the book psycho was based on also wrote asylum and right some of those other collections what's the one with burgess meredith did block write that one too torture garden torture garden oh my god yes he might have freddie francis yeah yeah i think he did i try me by those Yeah. I think he did. That's what I mean by those.

They used to come out with those horror anthologies. I mean, well, you could go back to Dead of Night. Sure. But there were a lot of them in the day. There were, and I don't know why theatrically they have not succeeded well. There are a lot of them that go directly out on video. Things like VHS and VHS2, the ABCs of Death, Tales of Halloween, which had a very small theatrical release. But I think people

are kind of afraid of anthologies. It's a self-fulfilling policy of not believing that they can do it because they're not out there. And so it just keeps going in that cycle. Hopefully we'll break that cycle. I hope so. And I remember when I was a kid, I saw in the theater Dr. Terror's House of Horrors. Oh, that's another one. Yeah.

Yeah. That's another one of the Brit ones. Yeah. And wasn't there a Tales from the Crypt feature? There was. It was in the 70s? Yeah. Yeah. There one of the Brit ones. Yeah, and wasn't there a Tales from the Crypt feature? There was. In the 70s? Yeah. Yeah, there was Tales from the Crypt.

One of them had, what's his name, Billy Zane. I'm going way back to the 70s. Yeah, this is the 70s. Oh, 70s. The Billy Zane one was, yeah, Bordello of Blood. Bordello of Blood. I remember one from the 70s with a homicidal Santa Claus. Yes, yes.

That was Tales from the Crypt. And they remade it. Robert Zemeckis remade it for the TV pilot. One of the three stories for the pilot for Tales from the Crypt. But yeah, Tales from the Crypt, the British movie. And Joan Collins was the woman in that episode in the British film. Indeed she was. And then later on, didn't they do like Black Christmas?

That was also a homicidal Santa. I think that was Bob Clark. It was Bob Clark and it was Olivia Hussey and Keir Dullea. My fan, Olivia Hussey. Yeah, there you go. Bob Clark, by the way, and people I guess know him for Porky's, but he made a good Holmes picture too, Murder by Decree. It's a great film.

It's fantastic. I love that film. James Mason. It's very great film. It's fantastic. I love that film. Yeah. James Mason. It's very underrated. Yeah. Yeah. And I think Christopher Plummer playing.

Christopher Plummer was Holmes. And it's really a good film that if people have an interest in Sherlock Holmes and have not seen that, really owe it to themselves. That and Time After Time would be a great double feature. Time After Time comes up on this show a lot. Yeah, we had Richard Kind here talking about it last week. Time Travel came up. Yeah, and it's funny because we used to do these shorter episodes. Well, we still do them on Thursdays, but we used to focus on movies.

And The Changeling was a movie that came up, and Time After Time, and we did The Wicker Man, and Murder by Decree. Oh, a bunch of those. Yeah, and Dr. Fibes. You know, these are the movies. And we follow you on Trailers from Hell. That's a great thing that Joe Dante put together. I met Vincent Price twice.

I did too. I met him once when I was in college. Yeah. And he was amazing, right? Yes. He was one of those I wanted to really spend a whole afternoon with. Because the first time I met him was on Thick of the Night when Alan Thicke did that show. Yeah. met him was on Thick of the Night when Alan Thicke did that show. So I

did some bit on the show and I was doing some imitations in it and afterwards I sit down and I feel this big hand on my shoulder and I turn around and I'm looking face to face with Vincent Price and he goes, I loved your Peter Lorre imitation. And I thought, wow, what a fucking thrill. Do a little of the tingler for Mick. He'll enjoy it.

He's a guy who will appreciate it. Let me tell you the second part. Then years later, I was at the Horror awards and and I see Vincent Price there and I went over and I said look you probably don't remember this but we were both on Alan Thicke's show Thicke of the Night and he goes oh yes that was a terrible show but But my favorite, of course, in movies, scream, scream for your lives. The tingler is loose in the theater. Scream for your lives. And then he says.

And he says, because it's a movie within a movie. It takes place in a movie theater. He goes, we will resume the broadcast of this movie in a few minutes. What was your experience with him, Mick? Well, I actually, he came to San Diego when I was going to college in San Diego and he had made a pilot that no one wanted of him reading Edgar Allan Poe short stories. And so they put it into the afternoon movie slot on the local movie channel, on the local TV channel. And I went to the studio in the hopes that I could meet him there. And I was able to, was able to watch the show as he was doing it

and talk to him afterwards. And he was just the nicest man in the world. Isn't that nice? He could not have been more pleasant and outgoing and supportive and really friendly. I got one question from a fan here before we wrap. Before you read that. Okay.

One thing that scared me, but they said he changed over the years. They said that Vincent Price, and I think his daughter even said this, he was anti-Semitic. Really? Yeah. Oh, at the very beginning, yeah. Yeah, at the beginning, his upbringing, she said, was like, you know, that's how he was taught. And then as he went out to Hollywood and he actually knew Jews and were friends with them, that that changed.

To meet a Jew is to love a Jew. Well, except for the ones that meet me. We break news on this show, Mick. Better than wins. Victoria Price. I guess he was from St. Louis. He was from where my mother was from. Yeah.

He was from the Midwest. Did your mother hate the Jews? Only specific ones. He plays along. This is from a fan, John Leary, and he wants to know, are there any Stephen King books or stories that Mick would like to adapt that he hasn't had a chance to take a crack at? The one I most wanted to do has just been made

and is coming out on Netflix this week called Gerald's Game. Yeah, that was one. That's the one where he's, she's in handcuffs after a sex act. Yes. He used to like to handcuff his wife and have sex with her. Yes. And they go to a cabin in the woods to do that on vacation. And he cuffs her to the bed and has a heart attack and dies on her.

That's the beginning of the story. Wow. It all takes place there. It's incredibly powerful. It's really great, and a wonderful writer-director named Mike Flanagan just made that movie, and it starts on Netflix. So that's the one I was most obsessed with doing. There are plenty of other things I'd love to do, but, you know, that was the one I really wanted the most. Thank goodness Mike did a great job with it and it's a really good movie.

We could talk horror movies with you day and night here, Mick. We could keep going. Tell us the plug again. Nightmare Cinema is the movie? Nightmare Cinema is the movie and it will be out early next year. We're still in post-production on it now doing all the visual effects and everything. And it's a potent little thing. And then the podcast is Postmortem. And

the old interviews and things I've put up on mcgarrisinterviews.com that are there for the taking and just basically kind of my library and my contribution to the genre. It's great to see those faces. I mean, he interviews Jackie Cooper in Superman when he's playing Perry White in Superman. And it's just great to see those people.

And what was Christopher Lee like in person? Christopher Lee was very grand, and he loved the sound of his voice. So did I. Like you, Gil. And so did I, for that matter. But the first time when I called him, I couldn't believe I'm talking to Christopher Lee on the phone. And 45 minutes later, I'm looking at my watch and going, when is this going to end? But he was a great guest but you know you didn't have to do much in the way of questions he was full of answers

i'll bet i heard with christopher lee he was another bullshit artist in that like he talks about his his army days yeah and they, somebody looked it up and they said he was a perfectly good soldier, but he wasn't a Nazi killer. Yeah. He makes it sound like he single-handedly defeated the Third Reich.

Well, he definitely had belief in his abilities, and he was great. I mean, there was nobody like him, and he was terrific, and he would agree with that. And I heard that Christopher Lee used to call up Peter Cushing, and he would imitate cartoon characters. That's fantastic. I hope that's true. characters. That's fantastic. I hope that's true.

I pray that's true. That's fantastic. I know he and John Landis were very good friends and I was able to have dinners with them a couple of times and he was fascinating. But the dinners, you know, if you have, Landis is a very loquacious guy as well and very funny. And Christopher Lee, most of his stories are very, very serious.

So it was a fascinating evening of conversation. I'll bet. Landis is another guy we'd love to get on this show. Oh, you should. He's the greatest. And we'll take you up on the offer of booking us up. Do it. Absolutely. So, Wells. All right. We could ask,

I got 20 more cards. I could keep asking this man questions. I could have devoted this entire time to just Lon Chaney Jr. That's what a fan of his is. It would get a little bit

repetitive for the audience. Yeah, until, but I at least brought you news about his schlongs. Yes. I mean, that's really breaking news. We've done 170 of these shows, and I've never seen

him get so excited. I don't know what to think of that. So, I guess... He's been the perfect Halloween guest. Oh, perfect. We had Tom Savini do one. We had Sarah Karloff do one.

We had Ron Chaney. Oh, yeah. And Victoria Price. And this was just perfect. Well, I'm very honored to be a part of this great show. And I'm such a fan, Gilbert, of yours. And, you know, from Aflac back, you know? Yeah.

We don't talk about that okay nice way to end the show doing something you don't want to talk about that gets cut so i'm gilbert godfrey this has been gilbert godfrey's amazing colossal podcast with my co-host, Frank Santopadre. Once again, recorded at Nutmeg with our engineer, Frank Ferdarosa. And we've had on a guest today

that confirms that Lon Chaney Jr., the Wolfman himself, has had a giant dick. Confirmed by Maria Ouspenskaya. Yes. Who he would fuck during commercial.

During lunch hour, he would bring Ouspenskaya and she'd go, oh, oh, oh. Do the Maria before you sign off. Even a man who is pure at heart and says his prayers by night may become a wolf when the wolfbane blooms and the autumn moon is bright. Perfection. Thank you, Mick Harris. Thanks, Mick. This was a treat.

The man who saw Lon Chaney Jr.'s giant dick. Now, wait a minute. Thanks, Mick. Happy Halloween. Thank you, Mick. And to you, boo. Ha ha ha ha ha ha. Godfrey and Frank Santapadre with audio production by Frank Verderosa. Our researchers are Paul Rayburn and Andrea Simmons. Web and social media is handled by Mike McPadden, Greg Pair, and John Bradley-Seals. Special audio contributions by John Beach.

Special thanks to John Murray, John Fodiatis, and Nutmeg Creative. Especially Sam Giovonco and Daniel Farrell for their assistance. ¶¶ © B Emily Beynon