Camp Crystal Lake

Who can forget the Herrmann-esque score, the jump-scares, the chu-chu-chu… ha-ha-ha, and the gruesomely original, in-your-face murder gore?

I saw Friday the 13th upon its release in May of 1980. Carpenter’s Halloween was still fresh in my mind as I had seen a re-release of it the previous fall. There’s no comparison. Halloween is far superior. But something about this step-child of a horror franchise lingers with me… and apparently with pop-culture, as we are to see this week with American Horror Story: 1984.

It wasn’t the first slasher film by a long stretch. That honor began back 1932 with a movie called 13 Women, and there was also Fritz Lang’s M… all the way through the Italian giallo films of the 1960s and 70s—Bava’s Bay of Blood, which was likely the inspiration for Paramount’s and Sean Cunningham’s jinxed holiday cash cow.

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Foundation

To beg or not to beg… that is the question.

Actually it’s not begging at all—but it sure is hard to shake the feeling that it isn’t. David and I are both hardworking individuals, we’ve never needed charity and have been gainfully employed our entire lives.

But we’re both artists—him more acting/directing; me more writing/acting. We come from an era where it was not as easy to break into the business … especially in regards to physical geography (East Tennessee) and the internet (not having been invented). So, much of our artistic devotion has been for love, not money—through passion projects and a LOT of community theatre.

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Creative Contact

When David proposed the idea of doing a podcast I really didn’t think it would pan out. We’re both busy guys. He travels all the time. I’ve been slowly developing an indie-writing career in addition to my main job.

But the seed was planted and things eventually took root.

I listen to a lot of podcasts. In the beginning, to learn from other indie writers about the self-publishing industry, now more for pleasure. So, I was familiar with the medium. When I asked David what would be our subject matter he immediately answered: horror and science fiction… subjects we have been more than comfortable with for a very long time.

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Monster Therapy

I am convinced that writers may be the pedigreed mutts of America’s Artistic Kennel Club.

Stephen King was at one time a janitor. Kurt Vonnegut was a car salesman and managed America’s first SAAB dealership. William Burroughs was an exterminator. T.S. Eliot composed The Waste Land while working as a clerk at a bank in London. Margret Atwood worked as a cashier in a coffee shop. Charles Dickens worked in a factory, and Richard Wright, William Faulkner, and Charles Bukowski were all disgruntled postal workers. Langston Hughes was a busboy, Harper Lee sold tickets for Eastern Airlines, and Zane Grey was a dentist.

So many authors boast an entire menagerie of collected odd jobs. Douglas Adams worked as a hospital porter, barn builder, chicken shed-cleaner, hotel security guard, and a bodyguard. Jack Kerouac was a gas station attendant, cotton picker, night guard, railroad brakeman, dishwasher, construction worker and deckhand. Harlan Ellison claims to have been a tuna fisherman, crop picker, hired gun, nitroglycerin truck driver, short-order cook, cab driver, lithographer, and a door-to-door salesman. The list goes on… and I encourage any of you to spend an hour surfing the subject on the net as it is not only entertaining but will work wonders for your self-esteem.

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