Monsters and Critics had an opportunity to sit in a round table of journalists with Mick Garris, executive producer and creator of the unique in concept and popular Showtime series "Masters of Horror."
Mick works frequently with author Stephen King in developing the bestselling author's books into television versions. Garris is a California native, born in Santa Monica. In 1986 he won an Edgar Award for his penned episode written for the television series Amazing Stories, produced by Steven Spielberg.
Garris was a production assistant on various films for Avco Embassy. While working there he shot footage behind the scenes on such classic films as The Howling and The Fog. He was sought after for his behind the scenes documentaries on film such as Videodrome, Gremlins and Indiana Jones And The Temple Of Doom.
M&C asked him about the current trend of grind house horror films coming into light with directors Tarantino and Rodriguez and his "take" on that style versus the genre classics.
"Well, horror is all about a visceral response. And the visceral response becomes increasingly difficult over the course of the years. I don't think the original Dracula is going to cause a whole lot of goose bumps.
"However, a movie like The Sixth Sense, where you see virtually no blood, no violence, is incredibly powerful, a really great horror film that is genuinely frightening and suspenseful. I think there's a great tradition of the [Palecki] independence, the guys who have to grab attention by screaming the loudest, that led to the grind house cinema of the '70s that I think that Rodriguez and Tarantino are glorifying because there was so much vitality and life and wildness, and this unbridled sense of "We can do whatever we want to do." And screaming for attention like a kid crying for its bottle.
Garris continued: "I think horror is supposed to be rude. It's supposed to break the rules, and it's one of the reasons that it has such a large adolescent and young adult audience, is because it's a breakaway genre. It is to movies what rock and roll is to classical music."
When asked if he thought Masters of Horror was trying to bring horror to a higher level, to be more than just shock value, but enhance the richness of the genre, Garris replied,
"That's what we would like, is to have the broadest possible definition of horror. Horror can be literate, it can be smart, it can be – it can just be rude and assaultive.
Season 1's "Jenifer" from director Dario Argento
"We'd like all of them to be smart and scary, but we also don't want the umbrella. It's not Mick Garris's Masters of Horror. It's the Masters of Horror because each of these guys (directors) has a personality, a cinematic personality that they can best express.
"We don't get in the way of what the story is that they want to tell. What we ask for is smart and scary. And some of them are more literary than others, but we are drawn from a lot of literary sources this year. We have stories by Clive Barker, and Poe, and Bentley Little and all these published authors that are the antecedents to the films."
When asked if he thought there were any more horror taboos that haven't been broken in cinema, Garris replied. "I don't know. I think Imprint goes as far as I want to see, and even a little further in some cases. I'm sure there are taboos to break that I would not want to imagine. I would imagine that one day a snuff film will become a reality."
"I wrote one called The V Word, that Ernest Dickerson directed, with Michael Ironside, and Sounds Like was one by Brad Anderson, based on a short story. Pro Life is an original by John Carpenter, who's back this year; Dario Argento came back this year with a story by F. Paul Wilson called Pelts – it's our wettest episode of the year, I guarantee – Tom Holland did We Scream for Ice Cream, we all scream for ice cream, which was scripted by David Schow from a John Ferris story; Edgar Allan Poe's The Black Cat is Stuart Gordon's film this year; Joe Danté did the The Screwfly Solution; I adapted an original story that Clive Barker wrote for the series and for me, called Valerie on the Stairs." Garris elaborated.
"The Washingtonians is directed by Peter Medak, based on a story by Bentley Little; Right to Die is an original by John Esposito, directed by Rob Schmidt; and then our Japanese film this year is Dream Cruise by Norio Tsuruta.
When asked if "Imprint" and other material played differently for foreign audiences, Garris responded. "Well I think that it can play for a Japanese audience in a way that it can't play for an American audience. I think there is imagery that can work in a cultural matter with another society than from our own."
"I mean, there are things I find extremely difficult to watch in Imprint. The aborted fetuses are one thing, but I find the torcher sequence much more difficult to watch. But it is something that is emblematic of Miike's work. And he has done a lot of things that depict that kind of imagery in his films that would not be able to play even on pay TV in this country."
Some of the titles of the episodes in this season, Pro-Life, Right to Die, seem like Garris was pushing that controversial content.
Season 1's banned "Imprint" from director Takashi Miike
"Nobody is out to preach. Homecoming might have been a little preachy, but in a way I found endearing. But I think John Landis put it really well last year, when he was interviewed, he said, "When we were told we could do whatever we wanted, Joe did something important and I did something silly with Deer Woman."
"I think other people thought it would be interesting to tackle social and political issues, but never at the sacrifice of the story. I mean, Right to Die is a definite horror story, it's a ghost story that is set in that field.
Garris continued. "Pro Life is a monster movie, but it has that theme at the heart of it. So, yes there's – and The Washingtonians is something that is also politically relevant right now. So I think the filmmakers felt free because of what happened with Homecoming, to tell stories that would straddle issues.
When asked if he thought horror films reflected the pulse of what is going on in society, Garris replied:
"I absolutely do; I think they can, and I think the best ones often do. Homecoming did it with a sledgehammer, rather than with a butcher knife. I think that it was more overt in the case of Homecoming.
"There's a great documentary called American Nightmare that's all about how the Vietnam War and the protest against it led to the wave of horror films that began with Night of the Living Dead in 1968 and carried through Texas Chainsaw in '74, and a lot of the anti-establishment horror films that kind of set the tone for the next 30 years of horror films."
When asked why he thought the resurgence of the horror film is due to, Garris responded.
"I think in times of social and political strife, they often seem to come up again. The horror film is something that, like its subjects, will never die. It will go into remission for a while, but then blooms again in its own form.
"In the case of the post-nuclear big bug movies, the post-World War II Universal Pictures, 1930s Universal Pictures that happened starting with the market crash in '29 was followed by a huge resurgence in that, and with what we're going through now, there will be a popular horror film that kind of touches on the national psyche."
"I would love to think that Masters of Horror may have been influential in having people's attention peaked again."
Season 1's "Dance of the Dead" from director Tobe Hooper
Garris was asked if he was being courted with calls from directors who want to participate in the series: "There aren't many (directors) we haven't heart from yet. We definitely get lots of calls from people who want to be a part of this, and there are a ton of people that we've been in conversations with that we've not been able to get yet, that it's all a matter of timing.
"Because of the way the show is made, we shoot them all back to back like a television series with continuing crews. And we shoot them – every ten days we start a new one, so it has to fit specifically into that slot. And that's one of the biggest problems, is getting all of these feature film directors to take a couple months out of this life and commit to doing this.
"The people we've talked to who we haven't been able to schedule yet are people like Guillermo del Toro and Rob Zombie and Wes Craven and a whole bunch of other people that we hope we'll be able to get if we get a third season."
When asked if Eli Roth was slated to direct an episode, Garris responded, "we definitely talked to Eli, but he's in Prague shooting Hostel 2 right now, and once you have a hit film, getting two months out of your life to do a ten-day shoot and the pre and post production, it becomes incredibly complicated."
"We want to get the broadest definition of what horror is. And we've tried to get as many different types of horror filmmakers involved as possible, which is why we've reached internationally as well.
"Peter Medak is somebody we reached out to, because I think The Changeling is probably one of the great ghost films of all time. Tom Holland is someone I've known for years; he did Child's Play, he did Fright Night, and those are just classics of the genre, and have these very specific personalities.
"I've known Ernest Dickerson for a long time and I thought he would be a great contribution and bring a new form to it, and was delighted that he chose the script that I had written to attack."
When asked which episodes from this season he was particularly looking forward to, Garris replied. "You know, I know this sounds like smoke, but I really think Season 2 is even stronger than Season 1. Some of the things that are really unique that don't kind of fall under the normal rubric of the standard horror film.
"I'm a huge fan of Brad Anderson… those are very intense, very personal, very quiet horror movies that don't have much to do with blood and guts and thunder."
"Joe Dante's Screwfly Solution is one of the least humorous things he's ever done. It's the darkest thing he's ever done. And I think it's great. Stuart Gordon did something really unique with The Black Cat, in that he blended the life of Edgar Allan Poe played by Jeffery Combs, and his 14 year old cousin who was his wife, the story of this lives, he blended it with the short story of The Black Cat and did something really special and powerful and unique there."
"I think The Damn Thing is extraordinary; I think Family turned out really well, John Landis's. That script was the least funny thing I think John has ever directed, but you can't get a John Landis film and not have humor show up in it. The Carpenter thing, Pro-Life, I think, is really good. I really do think it's become a much more adventurous year of horror films of the series.
Garris was asked about how much input he had into DVD releases. "Not a whole lot. I mean, I could certainly ask for things to be changed if I wanted to at a certain point, but Anchor Bay has done a fantastic job with them.
Season 1's "Deer Woman" from director John Landis
"I like the style where all of the packaging matched, but I really wasn't thrilled with the artwork. Some of the other directors felt the same way. Some of the artwork, the drawings of the directors themselves were not the best. But other than that, as far as all the content on the discs themselves, I couldn't be happier."
When asked about humor as a strong element to combine with the horror, demonstrated in the recent film "Feast" and other horror flicks that offset gore with a levity break, Garris was quick to respond: "Well the last thing we wanted to be was Tales From The Crypt, because that had an attitude that was the same every week. Which was great for that show, but we wanted this to be much more varied. I think the ones that had humor worked really well, there were plenty of them that didn't. Like Dance of the Dead and some of the others. Certainly, Dreams in the Witch House was not a laugh riot."
When asked if he thought the original horror films were superior to the remakes, Garris replied, "it's interesting. I am of an age where my hair is gray, and so I don't know if it's the nostalgia factor, but I would love to take someone who is 20 years old, and completely a blank slate, take them to see the original Halloween and see how it plays with them. Take them to see the original Hills Have Eyes, Nightmare on Elm Street, Psycho, all these things, and see."
"I just wonder. We're not making these shows for teenagers. We hope that they'll embrace it as well, but we think there are people who are my age and even older who are horror fans and are interested.
"A show like Sounds Like, the Brad Anderson one, is more about internal horror than it is about blood and guts. But I don't know. I can't speak for how the other films play now. I agree with you that I'd rather see Halloween than I would a movie with a number at the end of it that came out this year.
"I think part of it also has to do with marketing. I think everything is about the trailer and the 30-second TV spots and getting kids in on the weekend. And to do that, you toot the horn of the familiar and hope that that's a clarion call to the zombie walk to the theater. How's that for mixing a dozen metaphors?"
Garris continued: "I think there are movies that are just blood fests, and that are not stories being told. I think Carpenters is a really terrific story and it's a really good screenplay that does go over the top at times. But again, horror is supposed to be transgressive and make you uncomfortable, just by its very definition. "
Season 1's "Homecoming" from director Joe Dante
When asked about the importance of the character development within the horror structure, and female protagonists, Garris responded: "It's hard to say. I think The Descent had a lot of really interesting female characters at the heart of it, and I don't think they were all expendable cartoon characters.
"The best of them are always going to be more character-driven. But who was it who said 90% of everything is awful? Most studios are going to try to replicate what has been successful for them in the past. I don't think most studios understand or respect, or even enjoy horror films themselves, so they can't tell a good one from a bad one. They can only judge it by the box office."
"I'm a life long aficionado of the genre, and for me and my own personal taste, I know what I think makes a good story and a bad one. And for me, a well-told horror story is just a well-told story. It happens to be in that genre, but when I'm making a film, I don't think, 'Oh, this is a horror film, so I have to do this.' I just want to tell the story the best way I know how."
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