Yesterday’s post was about a thirty-second horror film I wrote. I was thrilled to see it produced and submitted to Studio 360’s film contest judged by the late Wes Craven. What I neglected to mention is that writing thirty-second horror films is addictive. I’ve written several more. Unfortunately Studio 360 hasn’t had another contest for them, although they did have a thirty-second romantic comedy contest.
I tried writing one of those but ended up with what a thirty-second conversation between two people who’ve decided they should just be friends. It’s a direction I wish more romantic comedies would take, but that’s another story. It’s probably just as well the contest was delayed.
I keep hoping Studio 360 will run the contest again. Here’s the script for one of my other ideas.
INT. EMILY’S ROOM – NIGHT
A little girl’s room. The walls are painted light blue with fluffy clouds. A bed with a stuffed white comforter and pillows is centered against the back wall. A nightstand with a lamp and several books sits next to the bed. A unicorn poster is over the bed.
EMILY, a little girl, nine years old, enters the room. She wears a nightgown.
She approaches the bed slowly at first then runs and leaps onto it. As she does so a large pair of hairy hands shoot out from under the bed and grab for her. They just barely miss her ankles.
A pair of glowing green eyes can now be seen under the bed.
EMILY reaches under the pillow and pulls out a ballpeen hammer. She slips over the opposite side of the bed, reaches under with her free hand, and pulls out a hairy creature. It’s squat, almost a cube, with tiny legs and enormous arms. It grunts and tries to crawl back under the bed. EMILY brings the hammer down right in the middle of its head. The creature screams shrilly but EMILY doesn’t let go. She begins hammering the creature furiously until it’s silent.
She then shoves it back. She climbs into the bed, takes a book, and begins to read.
Black blood begins to seep out from under the bed forming an ever-increasing pool.
In January 2014 the radio program Studio 360 announced a contest: make and submit a 30-second horror film. I love short films (not to mention short stories, short plays, short-sheeting, and Short People, but that’s another story) so I jumped on the idea and immediately wrote a script that was…weird. I didn’t intend to write a traditional horror film but instead wanted to offer something that was a little weird, a little unnerving, and that might require some thought.
I passed the script to a friend who passed it to a friend, a young director named Donny Black whom I really hope to see a lot more of in the future. He liked the idea and filmed it. I hope you like it too.
In retrospect I also wish I’d called it The Heroine’s Revenge.
Below is his one minute version of a more traditional film. It’s dark and hilarious, but also creepy so consider yourself warned. (more…)
It was late on a Friday afternoon. I’d left work and was walking to my car when my phone started boinging. It was a text from my boss.
She’s also a good friend so I could have used a shorter colloquialism, but I try to maintain some sense of decorum, especially when discussing job related matters.
I was passing by a library so I popped in to use one of the computers to submit my timesheet. I have no explanation for what I sent next. It must have been the waxing moon.
A few minutes later she replied to let me know my timesheet was done.
I just couldn’t let that pass.
That was the last I heard from her, which was probably just as well because the waxing moon was making it harder for me to maintain some sense of decorum. On the bright side I may be getting that raise.
I would like, if I may, to tell you a strange story. It could be a story about the time I was a fifteen and a strange man invited me into his Indiana hotel room. What he showed me was strange and exhilarating, a little bit frightening. It was fun and sexy and left me dazed and wanting more, and frustrated because it would be years before I could do it again. Even though he was breaking the law it still filled a deep need in me that I’d had all my life but had never really been able to articulate.
But the first time I saw The Rocky Horror Picture Show, on an illegal bootleg tape before it was officially released on video, is another story.
This is actually a stranger story about something that happened to me while I was walking to the bus stop. I have approximately seventeen different Rocky Horror soundtracks or cast recordings and at any given time I have some of them loaded on my phone and ready for my listening pleasure even though I only listen to them in the month of October.
I’m strange like that. Halloween is my favorite time of the year and I could indulge my love of Halloween stuff all the time, but I try to keep it partitioned off and only really get into the spirit of the season in October because the antici…………..pation just makes it so much better. It’s a delayed gratification thing.
I was walking to the bus stop in early October and pulled out my phone. I activated Siri and had the following conversation. The strangest part is I’m really not making this up.
Even stranger was that the bootleg tape included this trailer for The Rocky Horror Picture Show, which I’d never heard of before. The music sounded amazing and I thought, “Oh, cool, so this is a rock musical just like Jesus Christ Superstar.” Yes, exactly like Jesus Christ Superstar, only with corsets instead of togas. So. Do any of you guys know how to Madison?
Some graffiti I find profound and thought provoking. The aesthetics, or even just the placement, speaks to me in the same way more traditional art forms do. Furthermore some graffiti seems to carry heavy implications and raises questions about public space, its use, its value, and the human desire to express ourselves.
Tooth fairy? Are you kidding me? I still can’t believe how many people she got to swallow that. Swallow. That’s a little bit funny. What I mean is if you’ve met her you’ve got some sense of what she’s really like. If she’s a fairy I’m a towheaded rapscallion.
You do still have those, right?
I’ve been out of the game for a long time now and looking around I see things have really changed. I don’t recognize very much anymore. I’m surprised she’s still working at all, but she always was persistent. She’s a reformed harpy. She saw how things were going. We all did and tried to find our niche. She was smart, though, way ahead of the rest of us. She saw that there were fewer and fewer sailors on small ships and the whole business was going under. Going under. That’s a little bit funny, isn’t it?
We all should have known how things were going to go when the Golden Fleece turned out to be brass and they were happier about that than we thought they would be. They used it to scrub plates. Now that I look back that makes sense. What would you do with a gold fleece anyway?
I don’t know where she got the idea to start collecting children’s teeth. That was smart, though. Never ending supply. Kids keep growing. That’s one thing that never changes.
No, I don’t know what she does with them and I don’t want to know. She may be a reformed harpy but I don’t know how reformed.
If I’d been smart I would have gotten in ahead of her, but I guess everything looks clearer in hindsight. I found my niche and thought it would last. For a long time it was a good gig too. Parents would take their kids to the doctor and say, “If you’re good you’ll get a surprise from the Tonsil Sprite!” This was when it was a much simpler operation. The kids opened wide, the doctor reached back there with his blade, made a couple of strokes, and when the kids leaned forward their adenoids fell right into a bowl. Most of the time they only got out the inflamed ones, but for a while there some parents thought it would be best to go ahead and get them out early. Those were good times.
No, I didn’t want them. That’s not why I took the job. Let me be absolutely clear about that. I was there to help the doctors. At least that’s what they called themselves. I never met one who wasn’t a reformed alchemist, but I don’t know how reformed. I don’t know what they did with the things and I don’t want to know. Homunculi were very popular in those days and I just hope that’s where they went but I wouldn’t swear to it. My whole job was to encourage the kids to cooperate and if they did I’d slip them a little coin. Most of the time it was a farthing but if I felt sorry for them I’d go up to a groat.
You do still have those, right?
Anyway the whole business came to a screeching halt with mass-produced ice cream. There was no way I could compete with that. Retirement hasn’t been bad, though. We never did interact all that much in the old days but now that there’s just no call for us anymore we’ve found we’re not all that different. I’ve even gotten to be really good friends with The Appendix Nymph.
Oh yeah, formerly Medusa. Don’t know. Don’t want to know.
The trailer for the movie Suspiria gave me nightmares. At the time I wrote this I hadn’t watched the film. Then I did and was disappointed. As usual I got myself worked up over nothing, but, hey, I got a story out of it.
Here’s the text version, originally published October 15, 2010:
Even from the beginning I thought there was something in the attic. My closet was long and narrow, running parallel to one wall of my room, and at the far end of it there was a door into the attic. Maybe it was the fact that for a long time that door was kept padlocked that gave me the idea. Maybe I assumed the lock was there to keep something in, rather than keeping me out, since I wasn’t interested in going into the attic. For some reason I felt that whatever it was that was in the attic was malevolent, even if I didn’t know its name or what it looked like. Then one summer we took a trip to Texas. My parents went out one night and left me with some complete strangers. I assume my parents knew them and didn’t just call up random strangers asking, “Could you watch our son while we go out for a few hours?” But to me the people were strangers, albeit nice ones who gave me some ice cream and let me watch television. While we were watching television the trailer for a movie called Suspiria came on. The trailer, which you can find online, opens with a woman with long black hair, seen from the back, and a voice singing “Roses are red, violets are blue…” The head spins around, revealing a skull under the hair. I still haven’t seen the movie, directed by Dario Argento, to this day, although I have seen some of his other movies. Some people call him an amazing horror film director, but I can honestly say I’ve seen episodes of Spongebob Squarepants that were more frightening. But as a kid in a strange house the trailer for Suspiria completely freaked me out. I got over it, at the time, thanks in part to the ice cream, and the fact that my parents eventually showed up. The next day there was going to the beach and fishing off the pier behind the house to occupy my mind. Then we came home. The thing in the attic now had a name – Suspiria – a gender – female – and a body – a skeletal creature with black hair and a black dress. I couldn’t sleep. I hated to go up to my room alone at night. I wasn’t even comfortable there during the day. Any time Suspiria might come out of the closet and get me. When I came down the stairs, even in the middle of the day, I could feel her up there watching me. The padlock on the door to the attic didn’t make any difference. She was a supernatural creature, and since when have those been bound by simple things like locks? I wanted more than anything to leave my closet door closed when I went to bed, but I was convinced she wanted it open. Maybe she was afraid of the dark, like me. I’d leave the closet door cracked. One night I dreamt that I got up and started to close the closet door. Suspiria jumped out and hissed at me, “Leave the door open, boy, or I’ll stab you through the stomach!” The dream was so vivid that for a long time I wasn’t sure whether it was a dream or whether it really happened. I never told my friends – I couldn’t tell anyone about Suspiria – but they told me about similar experiences, of dreams that were so vivid they didn’t know if they’d really been dreaming or not. It wasn’t exactly comforting. For one thing I wouldn’t wish the torment I was living with on anyone. For another I thought maybe they really weren’t dreaming – and maybe I wasn’t either. I don’t know why I couldn’t talk to anyone about Suspiria. Maybe that would have just made her even more real. And I’d been through attempts to “cure” me of imaginary fears before. Before Suspiria I’d been afraid of snuckles, weird slug-like creatures that lived under my bed. A friend of my mother’s came and pretended to pull the snuckles out and put them in a shoebox. And it helped, until they were replaced by something much worse. Even if Suspiria could be driven out, what if something else took her place?
Logically I knew that such a thing couldn’t exist, that she was nothing more than my imagination, but the fear was stronger than logic. Since my childhood was pretty normal and happy I’m not even sure what the source of this intense, unreasonable fear was. It was just there. Until I was four we’d lived in another house. My closet there wasn’t attached to the attic, but it did have giant caterpillars. They weren’t malevolent, but I still didn’t like having my bedroom door closed. If there hadn’t been an attic, if we’d lived in another house, I probably still would have found some place for Suspiria to hide and watch and torment me. Or she would have found a place.
As crazy as it sounds I still think of her as a separate entity. Maybe it’s a twisted kind of Stockholm syndrome, or maybe it was just the realization that Suspiria was part of me that makes me want to consider her as a real person, or whatever she is. Even as an adult, even on the last day I visited my parents in that house where I spent most of my childhood, shortly before they moved out of it, I could feel her watching me from the top of the stairs. I won’t say I ever came to love Suspiria, but the fact that we had such a long relationship makes me want to believe she was more than just my imagination playing a prolonged and very cruel game.
She has no place in the house where I now live with my wife. I’ve never sensed her presence there. Even though I’m writing this in the middle of the night in an (I hope) empty house, I feel safe from her. And yet a dream I had just a few months ago almost makes me wish she’d come back. In the dream I met Suspiria again. This time she didn’t jump out at me. We were outside, in a forest somewhere. Dappled sunlight shone down through the trees. And she was no longer taller than me. She was bent over, but even standing upright she would have barely come up to my chin. Her hair was thin and stringy, and there were patches where I could see the pale skull with flaps of skin flaking off of it. Where there had been empty eye sockets she’d grown bulging, bloodshot eyes with tiny dark irises and pupils. She seemed barely aware of my presence. She didn’t speak. I can’t tell if she was dying, but I hope not. Any suffering she caused me doesn’t justify me making her suffer in return. I think it was just her nature, and hating her for making me afraid would be like hating a wasp for stinging me. I think her suffering was my fault. Real or imaginary, I believe she feeds on fear, which means that for years now I’ve literally been starving her. I feel guilty, although if fear is food to her then sympathy must be poison.
Even in her absence I occasionally think about Suspiria, not so much reminiscing about the times we shared, but really trying to understand what was going on. The older I get the more skeptical I become, and I always come back to the same conclusion: I spent years of my childhood torturing myself. I’m no longer as easily frightened as I was as a child, but I’ve had to admit to myself that I am the monsters I made. That scares me.
The lightning bugs are long gone. They started to disappear when the days first began to get shorter, when you didn’t even notice that each day the sun set a few minutes earlier than the day before. You don’t remember when you last stepped out the back door and saw an isolated flash by that cluster of honeysuckle. Now it’s the crickets. When you turn out the lights and go to bed you can hear them trilling, a low hum mostly muted by the walls. They’ve been going all summer but now they’re louder. They only go silent for a moment when you pass by. If you stop and wait they start up again.
The evenings are cooler. The temperature has dipped enough that when you step out the patio is sharp against your bare feet. The crickets are still going. On cloudy days you even hear them at noon when you go out for a walk. The rain doesn’t stop them.
In darkness you climb the hill. When you look up the trees are still inkblots on the blue backdrop of night but the crunch of freshly dried leaves tells you that won’t last long. This is the country. It’s supposed to be quiet, but the noise of katydids is overwhelming. Close your eyes. You can see them chant. It’s like static, but regular, rhythmic, a pulse that lights up just inside your eyes. Remember when you were thirteen, the intensity, the urgency you felt? Compress that into days. That’s what it is for them. They have one thing to do but so little time. So little time. This night may be all they have.
You come down the hill. Your eyes are fuzzy. You stumble over rocks, over roots, you walk slowly out of respect for your own brittle bones. Where you once flew you now step carefully. That feeling of urgency has passed.
You understand why this time of year is called fall.
With the Emmys over and the fall TV season getting into full swing here’s a repeat of something I wrote a few years ago. Nothing’s changed.
Summer is almost here, which means the major television networks are currently working on their fall schedules. What follows is a memo regarding new shows that one network is planning to air. How it fell into my hands is another story.
To: Scheduling Dept.
Re: Fall 2013 schedule
This network has consistently been fourth out of four among the networks in most markets, and fifth in a few, coming behind PBS. The programming heads have determined that major changes are needed for the Fall 2013 schedule. In developing new shows we’ve tried to aim for innovation, to create shows that are new, exciting, and different to appeal to the vital 18-35 demographic while also staying within established parameters so as not to alienate other demographic groups. The key is being innovative with what works. Please produce a schedule with slots for these shows we’ve developed for the coming season:
Eye See You (30mins, Reality): This is from the producers of Burn, Baby, Burn, our popular reality program in which families competed against each other in the Sierra Pelona Mountains while having to escape being burned by a giant magnifying glass. Eye See You is an exciting new reality program in which diverse contestants from all walks of life will have to perform emergency surgery. They will be provided some training prior to competing, but the real twist is they have to do it blindfolded!
Suck It (60mins, Drama): Aloysius Bernard isn’t just a vampire: he’s also a cop who’s been fighting crime as a member of the Atlantic City police force since the Civil War. Now he’s got a new partner, a tough girl rookie who grew up on the streets fighting the undead. Together they’ll have to work out their differences to solve crimes. Will she have to hide the crucifix her late grandmother gave her? Will he be able to restrain himself when she gets a paper cut? Things take an even stranger turn when these two very different cops find they may have feelings for each other.
For Richard Or Poorer (60mins, Drama): After trying and failing to save the life of a homeless man on his street recently-divorced doctor Richard Poor decides to fight hospital policy, and budget cuts, to provide medical care to the disadvantaged. It’s a heavy job, but he knows someone has to do it. With the help of his fellow doctors he just might find a way. Meanwhile he’s got to juggle a budding romance with a nurse and the faithful companionship of his pet iguana.
Too Old For This Bleep (30mins, Comedy): Five friends and veterans of the Tulsa, Oklahoma police force have been looking forward to retirement. But when a clerical error wipes out their pension funds they find themselves unable to leave the force, and training a group of unruly rookies to solve crimes. It’s a clash of generations as the old guys try to keep the kids in line while also finding out that you can teach an old dog new tricks.
Cut Ups (60mins, Dramedy): Life is tough for University of Ohio med school student Alannah Hayes. Her loans have been cut, and she’s struggling to make ends meet. On top of that an uncle she only just met has just passed away and left her his Toledo comedy club. She has to sell it as quickly as possible…or does she? With her fellow students she’ll be taking gross anatomy by day and telling gross-out jokes by night, and just trying to get by in Frogtown.
Finally, while the network executives are pleased that the exciting and innovative mid-season filler, Is That You Mo Dean? (60mins, Drama), about an HIV-positive man making peace with his past and looking for love in a small Iowa town, has already been nominated for six Emmys, three Critics’ Choice Awards, a Writers’ Guild Award, a Peabody Award, two Golden Globe Awards, and even a BAFTA. Having been featured in TV Guide as “the best show you’re not watching” it is being cancelled after its third episode due to lack of viewer interest. This will leave the Tuesday night, 9PM slot free. This decision is NOT final. Executives are considering re-working the series and making the main character a retired doctor who now spends his time helping the police solve crimes.
From here it doesn’t really look like a spider web at all. Source: Nashville MTA
It had started to drizzle. This time, however, I hadn’t gone off and left my umbrella in my office. If I had I wouldn’t have hesitated to turn around and go get it. No, I’d left my umbrella at home. I’d just left the building where I worked and noticed a lot of people standing at the bus stop right across the street and the bus was approaching. There were just one problem: the bus was going the wrong way. Also even if this particular bus were going the right way it would not only take me far away from where I lived, its final stop was a parking lot/recycling center almost at the edge of the county. It’s really convenient for people who live in that area. They can park their cars at the recycling center in the morning, catch the bus into town, and then in the afternoon come back to find their car windows smashed in and their radios stolen, but that’s another story.
And that’s when it hit me. This bus was going downtown. All the way downtown. It was going to the depot where all the other buses go. The bus route map is like a giant spider web, a circular one, except the spider is clearly drunk and has been eating some really weird insects which is why there are no straight lines and the threads are all different colors. I probably should have stopped that simile before it went too far. The important thing is rather than walking in the light rain the usual mile to my usual bus stop I could hitch a ride all the way downtown and catch an outgoing bus from the depot.
Yes it would cost twice as much—years ago drivers used to give out paper transfers that were ten cents and that expired within half an hour, which never really mattered because no driver really bothered to look at the time stamp on a transfer. I once found a month old one in my pocket and a driver took it without a second look. Then they upgraded to a new automated system and scrapped the transfers. That didn’t bother me. I’d rather pay two fares and stay out of the rain.
And my plan worked perfectly. When I got to the bus stop near my home it wasn’t drizzling anymore. It was pouring.
Yesterday’s post was about a thirty-second horror film I wrote. I was thrilled to see it produced and submitted to Studio 360’s film contest judged by the late Wes Craven. What I neglected to mention is that writing thirty-second horror films is addictive. I’ve written several more. Unfortunately Studio 360 hasn’t had another contest for them, although they did have a thirty-second romantic comedy contest.
