Speaker 1: Now here's a highlight from Coast to Coast am on
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Speaker 2: Welcome back to Georgian Ore. Along with mister Lobo. Mister Lobo,
Speaker 2: you worked on a film in California called The Blind Bargain.
Speaker 2: Tell us about that I did.
Speaker 3: It was quite an experience. It was based on a
Speaker 3: lost Lawn Cheney film from the twenties, also called a
Speaker 3: Blind Bargain. And it's got some amazing kind of monster
Speaker 3: makeup in it. It's got really interesting kind of characters.
Speaker 3: It's filmed very film noir. It stars Kristin Glover and
Speaker 3: Amy Wright and boy. It was directed by Paul Bonnell,
Speaker 3: who directed a movie called The Ghastly Love of Johnny X,
Speaker 3: which we showed on Cinema and Zombia last year. And
Speaker 3: what we got to do was, you know, we got
Speaker 3: to know the director when we hosted his film, and
Speaker 3: then he liked the way we did our show, so
Speaker 3: he brought us in to do all the behind the scenes.
Speaker 3: So we got to interview all the actors, all the
Speaker 3: special effects of people, all the writers, editive producers.
Speaker 4: Uh.
Speaker 3: And then I also got to be in the film.
Speaker 3: I have a role in the film and it's just
Speaker 3: it was. Yeah, it was a really experience and it's
Speaker 3: so much work, twelve plus hours of day, six days
Speaker 3: a week. I mean, it's like low budgeted movies. It's
Speaker 3: a lot of work.
Speaker 2: And it was film this time, not digital, right.
Speaker 3: It was filmed, Yeah, actual film and this digital age
Speaker 3: we're talking about high tech. They actually shot this on
Speaker 3: Super sixteen and it looks beautiful. It's got that sort
Speaker 3: of warmth that film has, and you know it's with
Speaker 3: with they had no safeguards, no as far as backups.
Speaker 3: It's like they either got it on film or they
Speaker 3: didn't get it at all. And so it was very
Speaker 3: kind of thrilling to see the technical you know, with
Speaker 3: with with digital, it's just cheap, just roll and roll
Speaker 3: and roll on none of the matters. With filming, you're
Speaker 3: burning a frame and it just costs so much. You know,
Speaker 3: every you know it's so costly to do, but you
Speaker 3: know it makes you plan better, it makes you you know,
Speaker 3: you can't you know, you can't do it on accident.
Speaker 3: You really have to know what you're after and you
Speaker 3: only want to get it, and you know it's few
Speaker 3: takes as possible. But there was a great energy on
Speaker 3: the set of that, and I think it was also
Speaker 3: a great way to homage the classic horror tones of
Speaker 3: this this piece. And you know what's beautiful about it
Speaker 3: is that, you know, even though photography was invented, people
Speaker 3: didn't stop painting, you know what I mean. And I
Speaker 3: think that even though digital exists, there are still some
Speaker 3: filmmakers who want to work with film, and I think
Speaker 3: that that's a wonderful thing.
Speaker 2: Directors like Marty SCORSESEI they still use thirty five millimeter
Speaker 2: film or have they gone digital?
Speaker 3: I think Scorsesey does, if I'm not mistaken, But I
Speaker 3: know that like David Lynch and a lot of directors
Speaker 3: have already moved on to digital and won't look back. So,
Speaker 3: you know, I think it's I think it's great that
Speaker 3: there are some directors who want to preserve that art
Speaker 3: form and do do their favorite art form in the
Speaker 3: way the old masters did their favorite art form.
Speaker 2: So lovell let's talk a little bit about TV horror hosts.
Speaker 2: When did that genre really start?
Speaker 3: The genre really started in the fifties. I mean, you know,
Speaker 3: there were always horror hosts to a certain degree in radio.
Speaker 3: You know, you had you know, like Lights Out and
Speaker 3: inter Sanctum and stuff like that. But as far as
Speaker 3: a TV horror movie hosts, that started in the fifties
Speaker 3: screen gems packaged a bunch of universal horror films for
Speaker 3: television for the first time, and then they were They
Speaker 3: went out to stations across the country and every every
Speaker 3: there was a national phenomenon that had that happened locally.
Speaker 3: Every single market had their own character, you know, vampire
Speaker 3: or bad scientist or whatever. They would host these films,
Speaker 3: and some markets didn't do a host at all. They
Speaker 3: just had a voiceover or weird bumpers of things that
Speaker 3: they made in house.
Speaker 2: I know Detroit had my buddy who's passed on, doctor Morges, remember.
Speaker 3: Him, Oh, doctor Morgas. Of course, he was definitely one
Speaker 3: of the best. The old ice House, right, yep, Chopsley
Speaker 3: is it Chopsley?
Speaker 2: Chopsley was his little big assistant the Harriet launched.
Speaker 3: His little big assistant. Yes, and he was always doing
Speaker 3: his wild experiments during the movie, which never seemed to
Speaker 3: come over quite right. There were always problems with his experiments.
Speaker 3: But what an inventive, amazing guy. Boy. I loved when
Speaker 3: he would come on your show.
Speaker 2: George, had we had fun. And then I remember in
Speaker 2: Detroit her Graves Ghastly.
Speaker 3: And yeah, yes, it was amazing too, and he was syndicated.
Speaker 3: People in even as far down as Virginia got to
Speaker 3: see Graves Ghastly.
Speaker 2: Did most local markets have local horror hosts?
Speaker 3: The bigger I would say most of the bigger markets did,
Speaker 3: I think, I think a lot, like I said some
Speaker 3: and some markets did not like I said, I think
Speaker 3: that Philadelphia, even though they had doctor Shock later at Boston,
Speaker 3: there were a few where sometimes they would have just
Speaker 3: a voiceover or weird bumpers or whatever.
Speaker 2: What about Vampire? How did she start.
Speaker 3: Vampire? Was she was an an actress in La. She
Speaker 3: was at a party her her husband was a writer
Speaker 3: for the show Rawhide. She was at a party Kate
Speaker 3: with a kt LA party and she was dressed and
Speaker 3: Missus Adams from the Adams family, and they liked her
Speaker 3: look and they asked if she would host the horror
Speaker 3: movies on the local TV station. And they knew that
Speaker 3: they couldn't get away with having her just be Missus
Speaker 3: Adams from the Adams family, so they created their own character.
Speaker 3: Her husband and her created Vampire. She had a twelve
Speaker 3: inch waist a Guinness Book World Record's smallest waste twelve inches. Yeah.
Speaker 3: So she had a wasp waist that made her look cadaverous,
Speaker 3: and you know, long black fingernails, long black hair, and
Speaker 3: she sort of her delivery was kind of like Norma
Speaker 3: Desmond in the Sunset Boulevard, this sort of vamp character.
Speaker 3: And she was in Life magazine and made a huge splash,
Speaker 3: very imitated by many horror hosts, including al Vira in
Speaker 3: the eighties. So, yeah, she was, but she started back
Speaker 3: in the fifties. She just went to the right party
Speaker 3: and they put her on.
Speaker 2: TV when the Adams Family came out, didn't Morticia kind
Speaker 2: of echo that too.
Speaker 3: Yeah, well it's interesting, it's the tale, what's the dog in?
Speaker 3: What's the Tale? And who's wagging what? She saw the
Speaker 3: comic strip and took some aspects of vampire, took some
Speaker 3: of her aspects of her character from Morticia in the
Speaker 3: comic strip, which didn't have a name at that point.
Speaker 3: It was just Missus Adams in the comic strip, and
Speaker 3: so she took some of that to create her character.
Speaker 3: But then, but she was so popular that when they
Speaker 3: made a TV show of the Monster or excuse me
Speaker 3: of the Adams family. They took aspects of Vampire and
Speaker 3: brought it into Missus Adams and gave her a name Mortitia.
Speaker 2: How about you, When did you get started in the
Speaker 2: horror hosting?
Speaker 3: Oh boy, well, I back in two thousand and one
Speaker 3: is when it really warmed up for me. I mean, honestly,
Speaker 3: it was way before that. In the nineties, I made
Speaker 3: a bunch of pilots and stuff that never got never
Speaker 3: went anywhere. And then but in two thousand and one,
Speaker 3: I worked at a TV station ABC affiliate in Sacramento
Speaker 3: and they had an overnight movie that ran twenty five
Speaker 3: minutes short. And I walked into the general manager's office
Speaker 3: and I said, you've got this movie overnight on Saturday
Speaker 3: that runs twenty five minutes short. You've got six and
Speaker 3: a half minute commercial breaks. Have you ever tried to
Speaker 3: sit through six and a half minute commercial break? And
Speaker 3: they said no, And I said, well, I don't know
Speaker 3: if you're obvious either. Can we fill this time with something?
Speaker 3: Can I try to fill this time with host segments?
Speaker 3: And they didn't care, which was the best thing ever.
Speaker 3: So we started creating host segments for the Overnight movie.
Speaker 3: Back in two thousand and one, and that evolved into
Speaker 3: cinema and.
Speaker 4: Zombia, which it's been it's almost twenty, what's twenty three
Speaker 4: years now, and you know we're syndicating across the country
Speaker 4: still on many stations.
Speaker 2: That's great. That's like saying, where were you born?
Speaker 3: Sacramento, California.
Speaker 2: You've been all over the map, done, haven't you?
Speaker 3: Oh? Yeah, you know you just go where the where
Speaker 3: the where the water is warm, where the food is
Speaker 3: you know it is, George. You know, you just need
Speaker 3: a mat on the ground, a dish with your name
Speaker 3: on it.
Speaker 2: I was curious. Gomanz that I'm was played by John
Speaker 2: Ashton Is. He's still alive. He's ninety four years old.
Speaker 3: He's still alive, and he does these one man shows
Speaker 3: where he plays Edgar Allen Poe. Uh and he lives
Speaker 3: in Baltimore, and people locals there always are on the
Speaker 3: lookout for John Aston. But yeah, it's amazing and he's
Speaker 3: still he's still great. He's just you know, I mean,
Speaker 3: every once in a while you'll see him in a
Speaker 3: more modern film like The Frighteners, and it's like, man,
Speaker 3: what an incredibly talented, funny.
Speaker 2: Guy you're meant He was a fellow by the name
Speaker 2: of Bob Wilkins. Right.
Speaker 3: Bob Wilkins was the host of Creature Features in the
Speaker 3: San Francisco Bay area, which I watched as a kid.
Speaker 3: He also was the host of the Bob Wilkins Show
Speaker 3: in Sacramento, so he was he actually was in two
Speaker 3: markets simultaneously hosting horror films, and if the wind was
Speaker 3: blowing the right way, I got to see both versions
Speaker 3: of his show, and you know, he was my hero.
Speaker 3: I wrote for a magazine called Planet X, which was
Speaker 3: a sci fi magazine, and we interviewed Bob for the
Speaker 3: magazine and we met each other, and he encouraged me
Speaker 3: to be a horror host and we did a lot
Speaker 3: of live shows where Bob would host you know, it
Speaker 3: came from outer space, a creature from the Black Lagoon
Speaker 3: or whatever, and I would write material and Bob again
Speaker 3: encouraged me and said you should get out in a
Speaker 3: chair and host horror movies. Like Bob. People don't do
Speaker 3: this sort of thing anymore. This is like the when
Speaker 3: we were kids and Creature Features and your thing, and
Speaker 3: he could well, you know, you never know, it was
Speaker 3: always a cycle with these things. You could be on
Speaker 3: the forefront of another wave of horror hosts and UH.
Speaker 3: Like I said, I with that encouragement from Bob Uh
Speaker 3: when when I was working at the TV station and
Speaker 3: they had that movie overnight that ran short, I knew
Speaker 3: that that was my opening. I knew that that was
Speaker 3: my shop to see if I could do uh do
Speaker 3: the job.
Speaker 2: Why did it die out.
Speaker 3: A lot of reasons. I think a cable and you know,
Speaker 3: and and and and home video had a big hand
Speaker 3: in it. I think I think a lot of Saturday
Speaker 3: Night Live had a bit of a hand in it.
Speaker 3: I think too, I think a lot of a lot
Speaker 3: of markets had trouble competing with Saturday Night Live. I
Speaker 3: think that again, with the advent of cable, UH and
Speaker 3: and home video, a lot of people will watch watching
Speaker 3: movies on cable and home video, and a lot of
Speaker 3: hosts went to cable and home video. There were a
Speaker 3: lot of videotapes that had hosted segments at the beginning
Speaker 3: and UH, and there were the cable stations that that
Speaker 3: that followed this. But I think that you know, on
Speaker 3: the local level, on broadcast stations, you know, I think
Speaker 3: that there was less and less of an emphasis on
Speaker 3: producing material in house and uh, and and then try
Speaker 3: and then also trying to sell as much of the
Speaker 3: advertising time as possible. And so instead of uh trying
Speaker 3: to make that, instead of adding a companion to the movie, uh,
Speaker 3: they just put in more commercials or not show a
Speaker 3: movie at all, to show an infomark fill in the
Speaker 3: middle of it.
Speaker 2: I what do you think of streaming?
Speaker 3: Now? Streaming is interesting, it's wonderful and terrible. It's a
Speaker 3: lot of it's a lot of things. Uh. You know,
Speaker 3: I I think that the part of that it's frustrating
Speaker 3: is I don't want to have two hundred subscriptions to
Speaker 3: a bunch of different you know, you're always talking to
Speaker 3: your friends and going, oh, I just saw this great show,
Speaker 3: and then they'll always say, oh, well, I don't have
Speaker 3: that service. I'm not subscribed to Paramount, I've got I've
Speaker 3: got this other thing, or I'm not subscribed to Disney Plus,
Speaker 3: I have this other thing and this other thing. I
Speaker 3: have Netflix, And so, you know, you lose a lot
Speaker 3: of that communal thing where you know, you talk to
Speaker 3: your friends and you're all watching the same shows. Now
Speaker 3: there's sort of like you have to ask for oh
Speaker 3: do you have Netflix? Okay, well, I you know, well
Speaker 3: there's this show that I watch, you know, so, and
Speaker 3: then again, you've got all of these services, and if
Speaker 3: you subscribe to all of them, you're paying as much
Speaker 3: as you were paying for cables. So so a lot
Speaker 3: of that is sort of frustrating. And a lot of
Speaker 3: these things that you you know, you paid for these
Speaker 3: spending services, a lot of them so that you didn't
Speaker 3: add commercials, and now they're all adding commercials because they
Speaker 3: you know, they're not making the money that they thought
Speaker 3: they were going to be making. And and I think
Speaker 3: that there's been a lot of weirdness too, where they're
Speaker 3: having these shows on streaming premier day and date at
Speaker 3: the same time as the movies are released being released
Speaker 3: in theaters, and sometimes that hurts the movies in theaters,
Speaker 3: or if they think it's just going to go to
Speaker 3: streaming in a couple of weeks, they might not even
Speaker 3: go out to the theater. So it's it's I don't
Speaker 3: really feel like they they've come across what really works
Speaker 3: for streaming yet.
Speaker 2: The executives a blockbuster video mister Lowo, We're asleep at
Speaker 2: the wheel, weren't they?
Speaker 3: Yeah, they sure were they sure were Scheorge.
Speaker 2: I mean I envision some young executive going into his
Speaker 2: boss's office saying, there's something called streaming which is going
Speaker 2: to hurt all our stores. We need to get into it.
Speaker 2: And the guy probably said, what are you talking about.
Speaker 2: We're invested in all this real estate and retail. We're
Speaker 2: not going to get in to this other technology to
Speaker 2: waste the time. I bet, I bet it's something like
Speaker 2: that happened.
Speaker 3: I think you're right. And you know who the you
Speaker 3: know who that person did end up talking to with
Speaker 3: Netflix because Netflix was renting DVDs to people through the mail.
Speaker 2: Do you remember I remember that then you just drop
Speaker 2: it back in the mail to send it back.
Speaker 3: Right exactly, and and and and everyone was giving that business.
Speaker 3: Everyone was was was carving the gravestone for that business,
Speaker 3: just like they were carving the gravestone for Amazon. Oh
Speaker 3: you're selling books over the internet. Yeah, that's not going
Speaker 3: to last. And in the same way they felt about Netflix.
Speaker 3: It's like, oh, you guys, are you guys are mailing
Speaker 3: DVDs to people through the mail? Yeah, you're good luck.
Speaker 3: You're going to be gone in five years. And they
Speaker 3: ended up pioneering the streaming world and dominating the marketplace
Speaker 3: and being one of the biggest companies in media.
Speaker 2: I met Jeff Bezos about a month ago. He walked
Speaker 2: right by me at a little restaurant. I was in
Speaker 2: Oh Wow over the weekend, and as he he's going
Speaker 2: by me, I said, Jeff, if I don't shake your hand,
Speaker 2: I'll feel left out for the rest of my life.
Speaker 2: And he came back and shook my hand and said, Hi,
Speaker 2: how are you, and I went, I'm great. And I
Speaker 2: was just thinking, as you just pointed out, the guy
Speaker 2: started off selling books in his garage on the internet.
Speaker 2: When I look at him now, he's one of the
Speaker 2: world's most richest guys.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, no one would have ever thought that.
Speaker 3: You know. Everyone was talking about people not even selling
Speaker 3: books anymore, you know, And yeah, it's just incredible. He
Speaker 3: went from selling books out of his garage to you know,
Speaker 3: having drones and millions of trucks and super domes full
Speaker 3: of robots and becoming a James Bond, the villain of
Speaker 3: the global media.
Speaker 2: I think he's responsible for places like Seers biting the dust.
Speaker 3: Well and Sears. I think missed the boat because they
Speaker 3: were the original mail order.
Speaker 2: Yep, they had that catalog they had.
Speaker 3: The cattlealog they should have been. The first years, should
Speaker 3: have been the first on the Internet.
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