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Speaker 1: Now here's a highlight from Coast to Coast AM on

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Speaker 1: iHeartRadio and welcome back to Coast to Coast George Nori

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Speaker 1: with you. We'll take calls with Christopher Garntannel next hour.

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Speaker 1: His websites are linked up at Coast to Coast am

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Speaker 1: dot com. Christopher, in your opinion, what makes a successful

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Speaker 1: horror film? What are the ingredients? You know? There was

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Speaker 1: a there's only one academic study to answer that question.

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Speaker 1: My guy named David Aldrich. He's a Harvard psychiatrist. When

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Speaker 1: I first heard about this book and the study, I

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Speaker 1: was like to seghead is not going to figure this out.

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Speaker 1: But he started with a love for it, and he

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Speaker 1: really made a lot of sense. It's like the best

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Speaker 1: if someone really wants to get into it, get into

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Speaker 1: the formula, because there really is one. It works. I

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Speaker 1: think what makes number one a good story, characters that

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Speaker 1: you can care about number two and then suspense. I

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Speaker 1: feel like, you know, the greatest horror films have suspense.

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Speaker 1: You know you're you're you're, and doesn't take too much

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Speaker 1: time spending it with the character and development just enough,

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Speaker 1: just enough, and then then you're thrusting these people you

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Speaker 1: care about into a dangerous situation or a compromising situation

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Speaker 1: that you feel like you could be in and so,

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Speaker 1: and then there's a variety of other elements. I don't

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Speaker 1: think a horror film should hold back. Did you remember

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Speaker 1: director Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho the shower scene. We never saw

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Speaker 1: the knife actually penetrating the victim, but we sure felt it. Yeah, yeah, no,

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Speaker 1: that's I was just watching that the other night. That

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Speaker 1: scene is still if people can imagine everything that came

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Speaker 1: after that not existing, how brutal that must have been.

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Speaker 1: What was that nineteen sixty one at least at least yeah, yeah, yeah,

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Speaker 1: So how brutal that scene was in sixty one, and

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Speaker 1: how shocked people were when that happened, much like The

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Speaker 1: Exorcist in the early set these it's like, you know,

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Speaker 1: people were apparently throwing up. I can understand, because there

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Speaker 1: was nothing that vicious and powerful. And it's been parodied

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Speaker 1: since then, But that movie still is extremely effective and powerful,

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Speaker 1: and I think people along the way, filmmakers along the

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Speaker 1: way lost saw it as a novelty and kind of

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Speaker 1: humorized it too much and missed what worked in those

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Speaker 1: movies and what was so effective. Yeah, it came out

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Speaker 1: in nineteen sixty. I think the music to every time

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Speaker 1: there was a slash scene, that music in the shower.

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Speaker 1: I think that did it too. That was Bernard Herman. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: amazing stuff. And it's funny too. Where you know in

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Speaker 1: Hitchcock's The Birds, if you remember there's no score at all,

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Speaker 1: no music. You're right, you're right. Yeah, when you did

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Speaker 1: the Monta Chronicles, tell me how much were urch you

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Speaker 1: had to do for that? Because the story itself was amazing. Sure,

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Speaker 1: So I read the one first book by Preston Nichols,

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Speaker 1: and that was enough for me to you know, my

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Speaker 1: interest was I wasn't adapting that book. I needed to

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Speaker 1: go forward and start with a clean slate and with

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Speaker 1: the idea that I was going to speak to these

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Speaker 1: men and do my own investigation. And what I thought

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Speaker 1: was most fascinating about that story was that Nichols was

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Speaker 1: telling it, that that Albilic was telling it. So that's

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Speaker 1: what I did. I went to I started with visiting

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Speaker 1: those guys. I wanted to. I wanted to look them

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Speaker 1: in the eyes in their homes when they told me

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Speaker 1: those stories, and start there and bring the my audience

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Speaker 1: to that realm and really make it authentic and connect

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Speaker 1: with these guys, and so that that was the beginning

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Speaker 1: of it. What would your preference be, Christopher, to do

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Speaker 1: horror documentaries or horror movies or horror movies? For sure.

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Speaker 1: I have a few huge projects come up, you know,

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Speaker 1: And I've done television now. I had my own series

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Speaker 1: on Travel Channel and then just played on Discovering the UK,

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Speaker 1: and I have a couple more coming up. But my

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Speaker 1: interest is less hosting and more making works of fiction

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Speaker 1: and to motion pictures. It's always been my interest, that

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Speaker 1: will always be and so that's that's where I'm I'm

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Speaker 1: pushing towards now heavily. It's Hollywood, New York. They starting

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Speaker 1: to open up in terms of production since COVID. This

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Speaker 1: is tough. So I've had several projects that we're ready

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Speaker 1: to go from before COVID to now and because of

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Speaker 1: the lockdown. You know, there was one company in New York,

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Speaker 1: another company in Los Angeles and it was it's the

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Speaker 1: ground is so shaky right now, it's unstable. So as

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Speaker 1: soon as they're ready to go forward on something, uh,

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Speaker 1: you know, a new rule is put down in a

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Speaker 1: change or we retract, you know, the release of everybody

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Speaker 1: back out because the disease is getting worse. So that

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Speaker 1: is it's uncertain at the moment. But I have one

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Speaker 1: project that's greenlib and I'm fortunate enough to have that

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Speaker 1: at the moment, So we'll see what happens next. Tell

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Speaker 1: us about in Ink? What is that? So in Ink

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Speaker 1: is an independent picture, so I can have control over

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Speaker 1: the story. And it's something that I wrote last fall,

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Speaker 1: right after I was done promoting Strange World, which was

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Speaker 1: my show on travel that was the travel show. That's right, yes,

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Speaker 1: And in Ink is about a young woman named Andromeda Stevens.

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Speaker 1: She's the daughter of a famous science fiction writer and

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Speaker 1: her mother went from being on the level of A. JK.

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Speaker 1: Rawlings with his beloved fan base. She wrote these adventure

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Speaker 1: science fiction novels, but decided and it was important to

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Speaker 1: become a whistle blower. She believed that there was a

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Speaker 1: government born to disease not only in her blood at

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Speaker 1: the moment, but in her daughter's blood, and that it

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Speaker 1: was killing a lot of people. So she revealed it

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Speaker 1: and started writing. His anti establishment essays didn't go over

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Speaker 1: well with her fan base. Her complete total world was

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Speaker 1: crushed and she ended up dying from the disease and

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Speaker 1: her daughter was left alone. And so in Ink begins

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Speaker 1: with her daughter Andromeda deciding whether or not she wants

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Speaker 1: to live, listening to her favorite radio show, Riot Hour,

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Speaker 1: which is much like Coast to Coast. Radical ideas thrown

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Speaker 1: in and she decides to go forward and live and

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Speaker 1: continue her mother's work. But we don't know if what

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Speaker 1: she's experiencing the only partial truth. And it goes into

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Speaker 1: the realm of extremely off the hook science fiction in

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Speaker 1: the Allah David Cronenberg in the early eighties, and she

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Speaker 1: believes she's seeing a sad and androids and human skin

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Speaker 1: and all of these things. And I don't want the

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Speaker 1: audience to know whether or not these things are real

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Speaker 1: in her world until the very end. And that's the story.

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Speaker 1: In short, that's fantastic. Tell me a little bit about

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Speaker 1: your work. About George Romero, who was an amazing a

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Speaker 1: film producer and director and put together Night of the

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Speaker 1: Living Dead, and he created the zombie culture, didn't he?

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Speaker 1: He did, And he claims that he was inspired by

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Speaker 1: Richard Matheson's I'm Sorry, I Am Legend, which was also

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Speaker 1: the movie with Vincent Price Last Man on Earth. So

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Speaker 1: it was kind of Night of the Living Dead. It

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Speaker 1: was a bit of a remake of that. But George.

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Speaker 1: Actually I met George and he reached out to me

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Speaker 1: because I was lucky enough to have met him at

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Speaker 1: a venue where my first documentary was playing. I handed

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Speaker 1: him a copy of the DVD kindly and never thought

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Speaker 1: I would hear anything from him, and he actually wrote me,

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Speaker 1: and then he called me invited me to the set

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Speaker 1: of Diary of the Dead, which I went to, spent

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Speaker 1: some time with him and shot about seven hours of

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Speaker 1: footage with him, really good stuff and him directing, and

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Speaker 1: having a great conversation with him. We stayed in touch

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Speaker 1: by email, and unfortunately passed away a few years ago.

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Speaker 1: But I've been sitting on this footage for years. I'd

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Speaker 1: never really shared it with anybody. And I was sitting

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Speaker 1: here as soon as we went into lockdown. You know,

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Speaker 1: I had a buddy from high school and died from this,

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Speaker 1: and it really became so strikingly terrifying to me that

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Speaker 1: I didn't for a while, sitting here by myself and

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Speaker 1: my home, I thought that I wasn't just like a

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Speaker 1: good deal of us, there's a chance we might not

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Speaker 1: make it. They were saying that this was on the

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Speaker 1: packages being sent to our homes, and it was so

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Speaker 1: contagious that if you know, you touched a package that

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Speaker 1: came now, so yeah, like right now, yeah, it keeps

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Speaker 1: coming back for some reason. And so I was I

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Speaker 1: was afraid, and I was reflecting at George's work, especially

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Speaker 1: even you know, some of the ideas in his films

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Speaker 1: at the time when they first came out, and most

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Speaker 1: of it feels like fiction, even like a movie, like

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Speaker 1: and it's not a Ramero film, but the Purge when

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Speaker 1: I came out, I thought it was ridiculous. I was like,

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Speaker 1: there's no way people would behave like this if given permission.

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Speaker 1: Now I believe it's it's very real. You know, they

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Speaker 1: don't even need permission. You know, people were losing We're

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Speaker 1: losing grasp for a little while. Hopefully this ends good.

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Speaker 1: But a lot of the fiction and horror that I

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Speaker 1: grew up watching and in some in recent years, seems

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Speaker 1: to becoming and fruition right now. So George was commenting

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Speaker 1: on things in subtexts, and I thought, the world right now,

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Speaker 1: if he was here, he would write his greatest film.

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Speaker 1: He would with what's going on? For sure, and all

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Speaker 1: of his, especially the other Dead films collectively, we're about this.

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Speaker 1: So this is kind of a metaphysical documentary about me retreating,

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Speaker 1: you know, into the things that comforted me and my childhood,

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Speaker 1: like Romeo films and special effects makeup and all of that.

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Speaker 1: But I can't I can't escape it because it's here

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Speaker 1: in my face now. So all of the televisions in

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Speaker 1: my home are all playing this, you know, the city's burning,

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Speaker 1: and news about this disease and spreading and people dying.

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Speaker 1: And I'm here watching footage of George that I shot

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Speaker 1: and looking back and that's part of it. But it's

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Speaker 1: something that's you know, I felt compelled to make and

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Speaker 1: I really I really poured myself into so hopefully I

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Speaker 1: when I share it with everybody that you know, it's

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Speaker 1: kind a good thing anybody. And you've got a novel

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Speaker 1: coming out in October, don't you? Graphic novel? Yeah, it's

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Speaker 1: called South Texas Blues. It's um it's this kind of

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Speaker 1: the fantastic vision of director Toby Hooper in nineteen seventy three,

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Speaker 1: very well researched, but I wrote it through his eyes,

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Speaker 1: you know what, I what I felt a thirty year

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Speaker 1: old movie maker in nineteen seventy three who hasn't had

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Speaker 1: a hit, who needs to make a buck, ended up

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Speaker 1: making The Texas Chainsaw Mask about that summer, that crazy summer,

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Speaker 1: him making that film and all of the things that

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Speaker 1: happened when I'm set, what a wild movie that was?

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Speaker 1: Wasn't that? Yeah? It was? It was insane? And that's

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Speaker 1: see here's another thing. So what a what a what

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Speaker 1: a powerful horror movie? And a movie that's lasted We're

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Speaker 1: talking almost fifty years, it becomes a cult thing, doesn't it? Yes,

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Speaker 1: now around the world, and and and so everything that

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Speaker 1: happened that summer, you know, the heat, the Texas heat,

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Speaker 1: no ac in that house, rotting meat on the table,

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Speaker 1: all of that led to the intensity of the end

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Speaker 1: of that film. If there is a formula for making

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Speaker 1: a great horror film, that's kind of like facing those

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Speaker 1: elements altogether, understanding and letting that permeate onto the screen,

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Speaker 1: letting people be effective and understanding how to capture that

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Speaker 1: and deal with it in post production. What's the worst

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Speaker 1: horror film you've ever seen? Christopher? That's a tough one,

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Speaker 1: you know, because I like a lot of I see

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Speaker 1: I like some charming garbage. So, I mean, I don't

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Speaker 1: know the worst horror film. Some of them in recent

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Speaker 1: years I think have really missed the note they kind

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Speaker 1: of I don't know. I don't know what happened. Why

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Speaker 1: was the Rocky Horror Picture film such a huge cult following.

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Speaker 1: I never got into that. So, yeah, I was living

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Speaker 1: in New York City in the nineties and I would

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Speaker 1: go to midnight shows of it. I think it's just

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Speaker 1: it's audience participation, the camaraderie of the audience together and

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Speaker 1: all that. It's one of the And it's also I

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Speaker 1: call them long night pictures. So one is Night of

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Speaker 1: Living Dead, another one is Evil Dead, another one's Rocky

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Speaker 1: Horror Picture Show. It takes course of one night as

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Speaker 1: one law night. I think that's another fascination where you're

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Speaker 1: kind of going through this journey in one night. Listen

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Speaker 1: to more Coast to Coast AM every weeknight at one

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Speaker 1: am Eastern and go to Coast to Coast am dot

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Speaker 1: com for more