Interviews
‘Are You Afraid of the Dark?’ Writer Promises Horror Nerd References Galore [Interview]
Everyone’s favorite 1990s Nickelodeon horror anthology Are You Afraid of the Dark? returns to television this month, with a three episode mini-series that reintroduces The Midnight Society – a secret cabal of teenaged horror authors – and pits them against a real-life nightmare. There’s a mysterious and wicked carnival coming to their town of Argento, Oregon… and yes, that is totally a reference to the master of ultraviolent Italian thrillers, Dario Argento.
And that’s just one of many references to horror classics, cult classics and even earlier episodes of Are You Afraid of the Dark? that screenwriter BenDavid Grabinski (Skiptrace) says savvy audience members are going to find in the new limited series.
“The school is Herbert West Middle School,” Grabinski cites as another example, referring to the antihero of H.P. Lovecraft’s original short story Herbert West: Re-Animator, as well as the gory horror comedy trilogy starring Jeffrey Combs. “It’s all very, very deeply nerdy but in a way that if you don’t know the references you won’t know [they’re] references.”
Grabinski is quick to point out that the references are “mostly mainstream,” but the screenwriter’s definition of “mainstream” may not necessarily apply to everyone in the audience for the family-friendly scary mini-series.
“The kids’ names are Rachel Carpenter, Graham Raimi, Gavin Coscarelli, Louise Fulci and then Akiko Yamato, and then her brother is Officer Hideo Yamato, which is [referencing] Hideo Kojima,” Grabinski explains, adding the creator of the ”Metal Gear Solid” video games to that list of cinematic Masters of Horror.
“So a bunch of just deeply nerdy stuff,” Grabinski says. “There’s a bad guy in the show, you’ll find out his real last name is Cochran because I really like Halloween III.”
“It’s one of those things where it’s like, it passed the smell test. I have a thousand references in it and no one on set knew they were references, which to me is the magical level,” Grabinski says. “It’s like some movies where it’s like, here’s Officer Spielberg and Romero, and I’m like, ‘Well, that’s a little too much.’ We all have our own internal barometer over what is too much and what is corny or too obscure.”
“I mean look, I have a kid talking about how his favorite composer is Wang Chung, so I don’t know how many people made a show with ten-year-olds where someone must really like the To Live and Die in L.A. score, but I’m also probably a crazy person,” Grabinski admits.
The references won’t stop with horror movies and video games and Wang Chung. Fans of Are You Afraid of the Dark? will notice shout outs to the original series, which may raise questions over whether this new limited series is technically a reboot, or set in the same continuity as the beloved 1990s show.
“The way that I view this show is that anything that happened before [in the original Are You Afraid of the Dark?] could have or might have happened,” Grabinski explains. “I’m trying to be a little vague about that. But there’s a lot of homages and Easter eggs to the other things, in a way that makes it seem like this is just a continuation as opposed to a reboot, per se.”
“I revisit a lot in this in some ways, direct and non-direct. Mostly non-direct,” Grabinski concludes.
But if you’re expecting Ryan Gosling to return in a homage to his first acting gig, an Are You Afraid of the Dark? episode called “The Tale of Station 109.1,” you MIGHT be disappointed.
“Here’s the thing: if we had Gosling I’m pretty sure he’d be a significant part of our marketing,” Grabinski laughs. “Or, we’re just so confident that we’re doing the Vin Diesel in Tokyo Drift thing, and at the end Ryan Gosling is just going to come up as like a headless horsemen, and he’s like, ‘Come on, kids! We have an adventure!’ and then leave.”
“And honestly I’d watch that,” Grabinski jokes. “Just, I called him, and he just didn’t call me back. I get it. I think Blade Runner 2049 is a masterpiece. But I understand that he probably wouldn’t want to do a Nickelodeon show.”
The new Are You Afraid of the Dark limited series premieres on Nickelodeon on Friday, October 11, 2019!
Interviews
‘Rubberhead’ Director Nick Taylor on FX Maverick Steve Johnson, Practical Effects, and Seven-Year Journey
Horror journalist, producer, and podcast host Nick Taylor moves into the director’s seat for his feature debut with illuminating documentary Rubberhead: The Life & Monsters of Steve Johnson.
It chronicles the wild life and career of SFX maverick Steve Johnson, based on the multi-volume book series Rubberhead: Sex, Drugs and Special FX, and those familiar likely already know Rubberhead isn’t your standard horror documentary.
Johnson is responsible for so many memorable movie monsters, having worked on Fright Night, Poltergeist II, An American Werewolf in London, A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master and Night of the Demons, to name a few. He’s also extremely candid in ways that feel atypical in this industry, open about his failures as much as his successes.
“It was a natural progression for sure,” Nick Taylor tells Bloody Disgusting of his transition into filmmaking ahead of Rubberhead‘s world premiere next week at the Fantasia Film Festival on July 23. “I think with my podcast, I got adept at interviewing people and pulling creative lessons out of them, which was the point of my podcast. I wanted this movie to be sort of a creativity pill for artists where if they’re starting a project or feel creatively stuck, they could watch this movie and be inspired and get actual practical creative lessons.”
Taylor’s background in PR and marketing also organically led him down this path.
He charts the course from book promo to documentary director: “But also Bloody Disgusting had a lot to do with this movie because in the very beginning when I first met Steve, I was helping him promote his book and I said, ‘Hey, I got a marketing background and a journalism background. Let me help you promote this book. I’ll just pitch stories from your life to the media, and we’ll see what happens.’ And John Squires wrote an article about Steve making Slimer under the influence of tons and tons of cocaine, and that went fairly viral.”
“For a week, it was story time with Steve,” Taylor continues. “He would tell me a story from his life, and every story was about a major movie, a major director, lots of drugs and alcohol and insanity. I would write them up, and I think John published about three or four of them. So huge shout out to John Squires because that was really great. So yeah, there were definitely a lot of outgrowths of my journalism background that definitely contributed to this movie.”
Rubberhead condenses the multi-book series into a cohesive feature film with a breezy runtime, sparking the obvious question as to how Taylor approached condensing Johnson’s life down to an under 2-hour documentary film.
“That was one of the more difficult parts of all of this, because we had enough for a series or an epically long six-hour fan documentary,” he answers. “But from day one, I did not want to make a fan documentary. I love them. They’re a lot of fun, but I did want the movie to stand on its own two feet as a character-driven portrait of an artist and a time period and a technology, that being practical effects. I did want to be objective. I didn’t want to make this too long. I wanted to make it re-watchable. So I think we just really had to focus on what the narratives were that we wanted to tell. So there were some basically almost cliché archetypical mythic narratives present in Steve’s life. We could have made this way longer, but we wanted to keep it short. But luckily that’s why you have special features.”
Johnson quickly proves to be an engaging subject thanks to his self-effacing wit and frank self-reflections; expect no shortage of stories about how drugs factored into the height of his career or the failures it wrought.
That rare quality was an asset for Rubberhead, Taylor confirms. “He does not shy away from anything about the drugs, the addiction, the bridges burned, the mistakes made, the lessons learned. He just is honest about all of it. He’s had a lot of time for reflection, and he’s done a lot of reflection, so he doesn’t shy away from any of it, which is huge because it’s very refreshing. I don’t think a lot of people are that way, at least in this industry from what I can see. So I think it was hugely beneficial. We wanted to lean into that, and we wanted to make this sort of a gonzo Hunter S. Thompson sort of wild tale through Steve’s overall life.“
Condensing his life into this doc was a slow and steady process for Taylor, too. “It’s been almost seven years. It’s been a labor of love. We’ve been as indie as it gets. We would shoot what we could when we could, and then we would edit when we could. Then after a while it all came together.”
In a way, making Rubberhead brings Taylor’s horror fandom full circle. It turns out that the very film that sparked his interest in the genre and practical effects also comes with an amusing Steve Johnson anecdote.
Taylor explains, “My gateway for sure was Beetlejuice. I saw that at a very young age; I think I was four or five. I felt somebody had shown me, my soul. I get a little emotional thinking about it. There was something about that movie that felt so strange and unusual, but also felt so familiar. It was spooky, but it was fun, and it was lighthearted, and it had humor, but it also had this macabre celebration to it that I just really got into as a kid. I felt somebody had shown me my own soul. And funny story, Steve got fired from Beetlejuice because Tim Burton gave him his hand-drawn designs and Steve’s like, ‘Oh my God, these look like kids did them. This is not what you want. I know what you want. I’m going to redesign these for you.’ And Tim Burton was like, ‘Yeah, no, you’re not.’ So yeah, funny story.”
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