Interviews
‘Hocus Pocus’ Star Omri Katz Returns to Salem 30 Years Later! [Interview]
In October of 1992, Hocus Pocus shot on location in Salem for two weeks (followed by several months of sound stage shoots in California). It was neither critically nor commercially successful upon its theatrical release in July of 1993, but annual airings on the Disney Channel and later ABC Family/Freeform helped an impressionable audience (re)discover the film. Eclipsing cult status, its popularity continues to grow exponentially each Halloween season.
Exactly 30 years later, Omri Katz — who starred as Max Dennison in Hocus Pocus at the age of 17 — returned to the historic Massachusetts town on October 22 for the first time since the shoot. Presented by The Horror Squad Podcast, the eventful day included a meet-and-greet and a Hocus Pocus screening with a Q&A.
Prior to the festivities, we visited some of the original filming locations. Three decades removed from the production and now sporting a salt-and-pepper beard, Katz was largely able to blend in with the crowds of tourists — but his voice still sounds exactly like it did when he delivered such quotable lines as “It’s all just a bunch of hocus pocus!”
“It’s nostalgic. Interesting,” Katz tells me regarding his return. “Many parts I don’t remember. It seems like the town has grown a lot. The flux of people is insane.” Salem — population 43,350 — has seen the number of tourists running amok exceed 100,000 on some days. Hocus Pocus, no doubt, played a part in popularizing Salem as a Halloween destination.
The informal tour included stops at the coastal house where Katz’s character lived; the Ropes Mansion, which served as the stately home of his love, Allison; Phillips Elementary School, his character’s alma mater; and Old Town Hall, which was used as the exterior for the film’s iconic Halloween party scene.
“I definitely remember the seasons. We filmed here in autumn, and it was the same thing with all the colors of the leaves.” Although Katz recalls the landmarks, as well as a visit to the historic Walden Pond in nearby Concord, his memory regarding the production specifics is hazy.
“It just felt like another job at the time. I would have never in a million years thought it would have grown to what it is. It didn’t do very well in the theaters. They obviously made some bad choices, but the fanbase grew. It’s pretty shocking.” He continues, “I think the internet really just blew the film up 100% more than it was at that time.”
Katz first took notice of the burgeoning following around the film’s 20th anniversary, when he was invited to participate in a live event alongside other cast and crew members. “I was kind of hesitant, but it was a great experience.” He stays in touch with several people from the film, often appearing alongside them at conventions. They also have a Hocus Pocus group text chain together.
Hocus Pocus was the second time Katz helped introduce young viewers to genre material. Earlier in his career, he starred as Marshall Teller on Eerie, Indiana, NBC’s Twilight Zone-esque anthology series for kids on which master of horror Joe Dante served as creative consultant. Despite only lasting for one season, syndication helped it gain a cult following.
“That was truly an amazing experience,” Katz enthuses. “I was already a big Joe Dante fan, so when I got blessed to work on that show, to me it was really one of the highlights of my acting career. Not only did I get to work with some of the most amazing talents in the industry, but the sets and the writing and Joe Dante; I was like a kid in a candy store. Every week was a new adventure.”
Working with Dante got Katz interested in the filmmaking process. “For a long time after that, I figured I was going to continue in the industry, until I got older and changed my mind, and directing was definitely the direction I wanted to go in. No matter what I was working on, I was always sitting on the camera, always trying to figure out how things were done, asking questions. Working with [Dante] and seeing his imagination, it was very inspiring. He’s like the biggest kid, and that’s another thing I think I was drawn to. He’s just a lot of fun.”
With the rise in popularity of the anthology series format and more kid-centric genre material, he agrees that the show is ripe for a reboot — and he’d be open to returning to Eerie. “I’m not out pursuing opportunities, but if the opportunity came knocking on my door, I would be happy to. There was a long moment in my life where I didn’t really want to be in the public eye, and I’m kind of opening back up to that.”
Along with Hocus Pocus, 1993 also saw Katz appear in Dante’s Matinee, in which John Goodman stars as a William Castle-esque B-movie director. Katz admits he’s not familiar with Castle’s work but looks back on Matinee fondly. “We had a great time in Florida for two months. I went from Eerie to Matinee, so I had already worked with Joe.”
The young actor was excited to collaborate with the veteran cast. “I’d say John Goodman is one of the most professional actors that I’ve witnessed working. He was very critical of his performances. He always wanted to do better. Cathy Moriarty was sweet, very humble. I’d seen Raging Bull, and I couldn’t believe I was working with her.”
Katz eventually made a conscious decision to step away from the entertainment business. “I grew up in the industry, so that’s kind of all I knew. I think I was soul searching and wanted more of a human experience; just see what else is out there, see the world, and be normal. I didn’t really have that growing up.”
That’s precisely what he did: Katz used his acting money to travel, surfing and snowboarding along the way, before returning to Los Angeles. “I wanted to get back into acting for all the wrong reasons — to make money so I could escape again — and that didn’t work out too well. I had to get a real job, the first one in my life!”
He found joy in hairdressing for a period before pursuing his passion for cannabis in 2002. “Obviously I had to be discreet, stay under the radar, but I’ve been doing it ever since. I have my own brand called The Mary Danksters. We’re doing everything the legal way, and I’m really excited to see where this industry takes me. It’s been a tough thing to navigate, but I feel confident that I’ve got something to contribute.”
As our chat comes to a close, I ask Katz why he thinks Hocus Pocus continues to connect with people. “It’s kind of baffling. I think part of it is the witches; people love the spirit that they brought to it. Digging a little deeper, there’s this human relationship aspect to it that feels really heartwarming and touched a lot of people. So many people grew up with having those experiences, and now it gets passed on generationally.”
He concludes, “It’s really a trip. It seems surreal. I’m excited to see what the future has in store.” He’s certainly not the only one; that rabid fanbase we discussed was out in full force for a non-stop 4+ hour meet and greet at Silver Moon Comics followed by a sold-out screening and Q&A hosted by The Horror Squad at Cinema Salem.
Many fans were quick to express how much they missed Katz and co-stars Thora Birch and Vinessa Shaw in Hocus Pocus 2. Although he would have been happy to return for the long-gestating sequel, Katz’s lack of involvement didn’t stop him from watching it. “It was palatable. At first glance, I was kind of disappointed. I watched like 30 minutes of it and fell asleep, but then I watched the rest of it and surprisingly enjoyed it.”
He elaborates diplomatically, “We’re in a different time now, and I think Disney has a different formula. The movie just seems to be missing certain elements, in my opinion. I guess I’m entitled to critique it! The witches were great. I’m glad to see the franchise continue. it leaves the door open to continue, so if they want to bring us back and do a different story, I’d be grateful.”
What does Katz think his character is up after 30 years? “Max is either in a psych ward or moved back to Cali. Maybe he’s running a cannabis collective,” he chuckles, alluding to his own trajectory. Wherever he may be, Hocus Pocus fans of all ages are eager to see. So, Disney, let’s light this sucker and meet the old broads again!
Interviews
Paul Tremblay on Fighting AI with Horror in New Novel ‘Dead But Dreaming of Electric Sheep’
Paul Tremblay didn’t start his writing career believing he’d be battling machines over the sanctity of his job, but like so many writers of his generation, the battle found him. In the years since Large Language Models (LLMs) and neural networks started gaining traction as an advertised shortcut to creativity, Tremblay has been active in lawsuits to prevent the use of his works in training AI models, and he’s found that, with each new project, he has to consider the possibility that some LLM, somewhere, is going to latch on to what he’s creating.
“Now I feel like I’m thinking about, ‘Man, how am I going to write things that would be really hard or impossible for an AI to replicate?’,” Tremblay told me, speaking by Zoom from his home in Massachusetts. “Maybe some of that is ego. I’m sure every writer thinks, ‘Oh, an AI could never write what I write.’ Yes, I’d be lying if I said that wasn’t part of the thought process.”
While that’s something Tremblay might consider with any new work at this point in his career, the Bram Stoker Award-winning author of A Head Full of Ghosts, The Cabin at the End of the World, and many other novels and short stories tackled it in a more direct way with his latest book. Inspired by Philip K. Dick, Harlan Ellison, and the quirky humor of the Coen Brothers, Dead But Dreaming of Electric Sheep is Tremblay’s attempt at a sci-fi-horror mash-up that’s both darkly funny and existentially nightmarish. It’s also, in his own words, a screed against the movement by AI companies to supplant human artists.
“I didn’t want to make it too didactic, but no, I playfully described this book as an anti-AI screed,” he said. “This book, in particular, was driven by anger and frustration, for sure. Not every book is going to be driven that way.“
Despite the emotions that fueled it, Dead But Dreaming of Electric Sheep does not read like a screed. Instead, wielding offbeat humor and tech concepts that feel both lived-in and frighteningly tactile, the book lays out tandem narratives all building to the same conclusion, each of them exploring our relationship to machine learning in a different way. One of these narratives belongs to Julia, a former gaming streamer looking for a new challenge in life, who gets a call from a California tech company with an interesting offer.
Paul Tremblay in documentary series “First Word on Horror”
The company has, it seems, implanted some new technology in a brain-dead middle-aged man which will, in theory, allow them to pilot the man’s body through a rudimentary, still-developing system of controls. Julia, with her gaming background, would be the pilot, in her own way just as much a test subject as the human vegetable she’s controlling.
Julia is a Gen Z streamer with an omnivorous pop culture appetite, inspired by Tremblay’s own adult children, who riffs on The Big Lebowski constantly and calls her strange new meat puppet “Bernie” in reference to Weekend at Bernie’s. Her wide frame of reference, and her interest in art and stories far beyond video games, is in part informed by Tremblay’s own experiences with Gen Z, and in part a response to AI companies who scrape art and culture as a means of consuming it for reference without really experiencing a story.
“I know that one of the arguments that OpenAI and other tech companies are trying to make is like, ‘Hey, you writers, you artists, you take pop culture, you take your influences, and you create something. That’s just the same thing that the bots are doing.’ And it’s just not,” Tremblay said. “I wanted to have Julia have her outlook informed by all this pop culture, and I wanted to make that feel really human as a way to show how inhuman the AI is.”
The other side of the story belongs to “Bernie,” who’s addressed in his point-of-view chapters as “You.” In these chapters, the technology in Bernie’s body starts to flicker images through his seemingly dead brain, delivering half-remembered imagery and perspective in a nod to the “hallucinations” of an AI model groping for understanding it can never reach. These chapters in particular show off Tremblay’s flair for formalist shake-ups, and echo the kind of hyperstimulated writing that Dick and Ellison made so influential.
“I think it was more just the general Philip K. Dick feeling of ‘The world is so strange,'” Tremblay said. “He’s a lot funnier, I think, than maybe a lot of people credit him. That’s definitely what I was thinking of when writing the book.“
Bernie’s chapters embody the strangeness of Dead But Dreaming of Electric Sheep, presenting imagery that’s at times puzzling, at times eerily filmic, and always unnerving. They also mirror Julia’s own journey in fascinating ways as the odd couple – the Gen Z gamer and the middle-aged vegetable – traverse the United States, and the tech in Bernie’s body wakes up to the possibilities of using his flesh for its own purposes. It’s a compelling narrative technique, but it presented some new writing challenges for Tremblay.
“I quickly realized I couldn’t write this book the same way I have in the past,” he said. “By that, I mean all my other novels I had written in the order in which it was presented, even things that are nonlinear, which is most of them. I knew I couldn’t do that in this book. It’s not a spoiler, but hopefully the readers figure out pretty early that the Bernie chapters are a little bit of a preview of the next chapter from Julia, what’s actually happening with Julia. It’s all refracted from him.”
Mary Roach’s Stiff
Dead But Dreaming of Electric Sheep began with a simple image, inspired by Tremblay’s reading of Mary Roach‘s book chronicling the history of our treatment of corpses, Stiff. As he read, Tremblay imagined a body sitting on an airplane, remote-controlled by someone else. At the time, it was a “silly what-if” concept, filed away in his head. Years later, when he became an author suing a tech company to keep AI from scraping his work for ideas, it started to feel frighteningly plausible, taking the “silly what-if” into the territory of a high-concept horror show about what happens when we try to exploit and commodify uniquely human aspects of consciousness.
“It stuck with me,” Tremblay said of that what-if imagery. “And then a few years later, when I was a part of the case suing OpenAI on behalf of writers, that what-if suddenly didn’t seem as silly. The more I learned about how that corporation operates and without really any sort of ethical thought to anything, I was like, ‘Oh, I’m going to play with that. That’s actually happening.”
So, what if someone actually in favor of generative AI picks up Tremblay’s self-described “anti-AI screed?” He hopes that, at the very least, he’s made the ride enjoyable in a distinctly human way that might begin to reshape the conversation.
“I think that was another reason why I wanted to have the humor,” Tremblay said. “If people are reading this book who aren’t on the side of like, ‘Hey, LLMs taking authors’ books is bad,’ maybe if they read something that’s cut with some humor, that maybe they’ll be more easily swayed.”
Dead But Dreaming of Electric Sheep is now in bookstores everywhere.
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