WHEN BURTON MET BARNABAS

I went to an opening day showing of director Tim Burton’s Dark Shadows movie, starring Johnny Depp as its vampire protagonist Barnabas Collins, with trepidation. The film is based on the legendary daytime serial that was created by the late producer Dan Curtis, and ran on ABC from 1966 into 1971, attracting an immense audience, including myself. It was a modern, ongoing version of Gothic melodrama, incorporating nearly every element of classic horror and Gothic romance, and gripped the imaginations of young Baby Boomers like myself. (It has also been a source for comics adaptations, from Ken Bald’s 1970s newspaper strip to Dynamite Entertainment’s recent comic book series, which is why it fits in “Comics in Context.”) But the trailers and commercials for the movie appalled many of the show’s admirers, seemingly indicating that Burton and his collaborators had turned Dark Shadows into a heavy-handed farce, set to a 1970s rock score. In interviews Burton, Depp, and screenwriter Seth Grahame-Smith expressed bafflement at the negative reaction, saying they did treat the saga of Barnabas Collins seriously, but Burton and Grahame-Smith also ominously spoke about emphasizing the “weirdness” of the show. Then Warners put Danny Elfman’s score for the film online, and it was what I had hoped for: grand and powerful music for a Gothic drama on an operatic scale, with nice momentary homages to Robert Cobert’s score for the original TV series.

So I hoped that Burton and the others, as well as some reviewers who had seen preview screenings were right, and that the movie would turn out to be basically serious, but with Burton’s characteristically goofy touches here and there. But still, why would Warner Bros. marketing people go out of their way in the publicity to make the movie seem like a comedy? Did they somehow think that in this current wave of vampire fiction, from Anne Rice’s novels to Joss Whedon’s Buffy and Angel to True Blood and Twilight that there was no audience for a serious and romantic vampire movie? Did they think there would be more potential audience if they claimed Dark Shadows was the second coming of Burton’s horror comedy Beetlejuice? Or were they acting out of desperation because Burton’s Dark Shadows really wasn’t good?

Watching the movie, I felt considerably relieved. Yes, the goofy gags in the trailer and commercials are there, and rock music alternates with Elfman’s evocative score. But much of the movie is done more or less seriously, and much of it works quite well. But Burton and company’s lapses into comedy continually undercut the drama, and in various important ways they fail to bring out or even seem to understand the power of their source material. In short, I was relieved because the movie wasn’t as bad as I had feared. It was entertaining and sometimes even perceptive, but it is deeply flawed.

To understand what Tim Burton gets right about Dark Shadows and what he gets wrong, you should know something about the nearly half century history of this property. I’ve written a number of previous “Comics in Context” columns about Dark Shadows in the past, most recently “Remembering Barnabas Collins,” on the occasion of the recent passing of Jonathan Frid, the actor who originated the role. You may wish to read that column as background.

In the course of this current column, I will refer to the various past incarnations of Dark Shadows. There was the original 1966-1971 television series, created by Curtis and starring Mr. Frid as Barnabas, in which the character was introduced as a villain but evolved into a tragic antihero and finally into a genuine hero. Curtis directed the 1970 film House of Dark Shadows, starring Frid and other members of the television cast, which was an alternate version of the show’s continuity, in which Curtis carried out his original intent for Barnabas, presenting him as a villain. In 1991 a new Dark Shadows television series, produced by Curtis, starring Ben Cross as Barnabas, ran on NBC. This was a reboot of the original continuity, that covered Barnabas’s arrival in the present day and included the flashback to his 18th century origin. NBC canceled the show after its initial season, despite its popularity with the young demographic; by the time NBC realized its mistake and tried to revive the series, the cast had gone their separate ways and it was too late. In 2004 Curtis produced a pilot for yet another revival for the WB television network, but it did not work and was not picked up.

As usual I will discuss the entire plot for the 2012 Dark Shadows movie, so consider yourselves given spoiler warnings.

CAMP AND THE COLLINS FAMILY

An awful lot of the recent newspaper and magazine articles about Dark Shadows and even many of the reviews of the new movie predictably recycle the old cliches about how the original Dark Shadows television series was camp: actors blew their lines, props malfunctioned, scenery fell down. Most of these pieces are written by lazy journalists who seem to have done more research on old articles about the show than bothering to watch any of it themselves. The worst case is critic Terrence Rafferty’s feature article about the original Dark Shadows in The New York Times in which he gives no sign of having watched any of the old episodes himself. Instead he interviews Tim Burton about the original series although Burton has a particularly eccentric take on the show, even missing aspects that lie at the heart of the series, as we shall see. David Edelstein in New York Magazine recalls watching the original series as a child but he too spends more time discussing the bloopers than explaining why he found the show so appealing back then. At least he perceives the Burton movie as a “camp travesty” of the original. Time’s Richard Corliss, to his credit, watched original episodes more recently and declares them show to be “creakier than it is creepy”. I suspect he watched some of the earlier episodes when the show moved as slow as molasses, which is to say, as slowly as a typical soap opera of that time. By the time Dark Shadows reached its peak, it was moving at a rapid clip that had me and my friends on the proverbial edges of our seats; if you missed a few episodes and you were somewhat lost. Projecting their own attitudes onto the audience, some critics have persuaded themselves that the millions who watched the original Dark Shadows in the 1960s liked it precisely because it was camp. Sigh. No, we didn’t.

If the original Dark Shadows was camp, then it was unintentional camp, unlike the Batman TV show which ran in this same period. Due to its low budget, the show was done “live on tape,”and it was extremely rare for retakes to be done. Therefore, any mistakes were preserved for posterity on the videotapes. Dark Shadows is the only 1960s daytime serial that has survived through the decades through reruns and home video. I wonder how many other soap operas of the time had similar bloopers.

You can easily find Dark Shadows blooper reels on YouTube, they are indeed funny, and they might give you the impression that the show was a continual series of onscreen calamities. But if you watch the actual episodes just looking for amusing bloopers, then you’re wasting your time. The actors are professionals, not bungling amateurs. If you spend enough time watching enough episodes, sooner or later you will indeed come across a mistake, but most of them, which simply involve an actor forgetting a line, aren’t funny, but simply reminders that you’re watching something close to live drama. (For example, in the recent live episode of 30 Rock, the show’s creator Tina Fey mixed up two characters’ names in one of her lines.) So if you’re just watching the show looking for blunders, you’re wasting your time. Don’t you have better things to do?

Another reason for Dark Shadows‘ “camp” reputation is that it is acted and directed in a theatrical style. The cast mostly consisted of New York theater actors, and the show, in its best years, was written in a theatrical style. This is not to say that the actors are overacting and chewing the scenery, but that they are performing in a larger than life manner. Some cast members, included David Selby, have pointed out that this style gives the show its dramatic intensity. Certainly it is appropriate for a modern recreation of melodrama. To appreciate the show, you have to allow yourself to accept the style.

I suspect that many people who dismiss the show as camp simply can’t bring themselves to accept fantasy material like vampires and ghosts as the stuff of serious drama. Comics aficionados who read this column should be aware that this is the same mindset that dismisses superheroes and some other comics genres.

Finally, it should be pointed out that the writers and actors put some intentional comedy into the show. Certain characters provide comic relief, notably John Karlen’s portrayal of Barnabas’s high-strung servant Willie Loomis, and even more so Karlen’s literally hysterical half-mad Carl Collins in the 1897 story arc, as well as Nancy Barrett’s bawdy Cockney songstress Pansy Faye, also in the 1897 sequence. But Willie, Carl and Pansy all had serious sides, as well. More often the humor in Dark Shadows comes through the wry and sardonic comments of various characters, on the action, notably Quentin Collins, Professor Stokes, and the villains Nicholas Blair and Count Petofi; one can sense the writers’ pleasure in scripting dialogue for these characters. The discerning Dark Shadows enthusiast can even detect occasional in jokes, delivered straightfaced, on the show: for example, at one point Donna McKechnie, who was already becoming famous as a Broadway dancer, claimed in her DS role of Amanda Harris that she could not dance. But almost never does Dark Shadows go over the top with such humor; instead it’s done stylishly and usually subtly.

Over the years I have attended a great many Dark Shadows Festivals and there watched episodes of the original series, or excerpts from them, alongside large audiences. So I know how Dark Shadows aficionados react to the show. Yes, when there is a blooper onscreen, or an actor goes over the top in a line reading, or a line seems over the top, the audience laughs affectionately. But otherwise the audience is riveted to the story, dedicated to the characters, and applauds loudly and sincerely at the end of powerful scenes. In other words, they take the show very seriously indeed; the unintentionally amusing moments are just a bonus.

BARNABAS COLLINS

After Barnabas is freed from his coffin, he sees the golden arches of a nearby McDonalds, and wonders aloud if this giant “M” stands for Mephistopheles, the name of the devil. This is the first of the movie’s many, many gags about Barnabas’s bewilderment by 1970s culture, and it’s not funny, nor are any of the others. This isn’t just my opinion; the audience I was with laughed at only one of these gags (not the McDonalds one), and even then their laughter sounded muffled.

Just why did Burton and Depp decide to set their Dark Shadows movie in 1972? That’s the year after the original series ended. But Burton isn’t continuing the continuity from the original series, like Lara Parker does in her novels, which are set in the early 1970s; he’s rebooting the series instead. The easy answer is that Burton wanted to make fun of popular culture from this decade of his youth. But Dark Shadows is really part of 1960s popular culture, as I will show elsewhere in my commentary on this movie. Moreover, making fun of the 1970s is hardly a new phenomenon (See, for example, Mike Myers’ Austin Powers in Goldmember) and is like shooting fish in a barrel. Besides, I expect that Warners is aiming this movie at a young demographic who weren’t even alive yet in the 1970s. How much sense does it make to have Johnny Depp’s Barnabas reading and commenting on the notoriously kitschy 1970s novel Love Story when much of the intended audience has never heard of this book?

Dan Curtis’s various film and TV versions of Dark Shadows never explored any culture shock that Barnabas might have experienced in coming to the 20th century. The only clear example that Barnabas felt out of place in this new century was the fact that he did not have electricity installed in his home, the Old House, preferring to use candlelight. The characters who did not know he was the 18th century Barnabas presumably regarded this as his eccentricity, and certainly it added to the atmosphere of scenes set in the Old House. Barnabas also typically wore a kind of cape, though it was a modern one, and kept his 18th century hairstyle, but these were subtle signs that he was attempting to find modern equivalents to his 18th century wardrobe.

Of course it was essential to Curtis’s concept of Barnabas as an 18th century vampire posing as his own descendant that Barnabas seem outwardly to be a modern man. Viewers were left to presume that between the time that Willie released him from his coffin and Barnabas’s first visit to Collinwood that Barnabas had quickly learned enough about the 20th century to pass for a man of that time. That presumably meant that Willie Loomis, hardly the brightest or most cultured of men, must have been Barnabas’s principal source of information!

But a major reason that the TV series did not delve into Barnabas’s culture shock was that Curtis and his collaborators were very careful to minimize their references to modernity on the show. Original cast member Nancy Barrett has joked that the wealthy Collinses apparently did not own a television set. Indeed, there were telephones at Collinwood, and a tape recorder played a key role in one story arc, but one never saw a television set. In the second episode Carolyn is seen dancing to rock music, but that is the first and last use of rock music on the show. There are no references to current events. In 1969 and 1970 the younger actresses on the show and in House wear miniskirts in the present day sequences, but the characters’ wardrobes and hairstyles are nonetheless rather conservative for the late 1960s and early 1970s. When there is a major exception, like actor Christopher Pennock’s very 1970s outfit as astrologer Sebastian Shaw, it seems like a shock in the setting of this show. I also like a clever touch at the start of the 2004 Dark Shadows pilot: on arriving in Collinsport, Victoria Winters discovers that her mobile phone no longer works. (That’s actually true in some isolated small towns, such as Woodstock, New York.)

It seems that Dan Curtis and his collaborators wanted to create a timeless sort of atmosphere on Dark Shadows, that was suitable to their goal of creating a modern version of a traditional Gothic romance. Though set in the late 1960s, Dark Shadows from its beginning, with young Victoria Winters journeying to become governess at a great old mansion on the rocky coast of Maine, evoked the plots of novels of past decades, like Daphne DuMaurier’s Rebecca or even Jane Eyre. As the show delved increasingly into the supernatural, it would do its own versions of story elements from 18th and 19th century romances and horror tales, like Dracula and Frankenstein. Collinwood and Collinsport seemed to stand apart from modernity and the outside world, so they seemed more credible settings for traditional romance and horror storylines. Perhaps this is why the show’s audiences were willing to accept the long story arcs on the show that were literally set in the 18th and 19th centuries. Surely this was part of Dark Shadows‘ appeal. Imagine: millions of young people in the late 1960s were watching a show that spent months doing period drama set in past centuries! This timeless air of Dark Shadows presumably is another reason why the show has continued to flourish in reruns and home video for nearly half a century; it doesn’t date as badly as many other shows from its period.

By emphasizing 1970s popular culture, Burton’s Dark Shadows subverts Curtis’s strategy for his creation. It’s as if Burton and Depp and Grahame-Smith were fans wondering how Barnabas would react to television or to lava lamps or to rock music. In other words, this aspect of their Dark Shadows movie comes off as fan fiction, attending to irrelevant trivia while missing the point of the series they are adapting.

Moreover, they are distorting Barnabas’s own character. They have him ranting about the devil, when confronted by some aspect of modern culture he dislikes and does not understand. Thus Barnabas sounds more like one of the show’s versions of Reverend Trask, the witch-hunting religious fanatic who was one of the series’ most memorable villains. Barnabas was always Trask’s adversary. In the original series’ 18th century arc, Barnabas, before his transformation, was depicted as a man of reason who regarded Trask’s ravings about witches as dangerous superstition; Barnabas strove to save the time-traveling Victoria Winters from being tried and executed by Trask for witchcraft. The 1991 series emphasized that Trask was an anachronism in the 18th century, still hunting alleged witches a century after the Salem witch trials, and that Barnabas was a rational man of the 18th century Enlightenment. Indeed, Joshua Collins, Barnabas’s father, was a supporter of the American revolution, and Barnabas would have been a contemporary of Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin. It’s more likely that Barnabas, as depicted on the TV series, would be amazed and fascinated by modernity than that he would react to its manifestations as if it were the devil’s work.

But I think that Burton may have had another reason for setting this film in 1972, and this one works. All the past film and TV versions of Dark Shadows have started out set in whatever year is then the present one. Thus Barnabas was imprisoned in his coffin in the late 18th century, but he is released in the present. I think that we all tend to assume that the present day represents the height of human achievement to date, and that we in the present are more enlightened than people were in the past.

But as the present turns into the past, its flaws become evident in retrospect. For example, to many people who lived in the early and mid-1960s, that was a period in which American culture was making great strides forward: the Kennedy Administration, the space race, the civil rights movement, and so forth. Yet now in the 21st century the Mad Men television series portrays that same period as deeply flawed by our contemporary standards, with faults ranging from sexism to smoking. (The Mad Men episode that debuted on Sunday May 13, 2012 was set in 1966, was titled “Dark Shadows” and even made reference to the show, although one character dismissed it as “crap.” Well, it wasn’t good until Barnabas showed up in 1967.)

In Burton’s Dark Shadows, Barnabas still comes from the 18th century, but is released not into our present but into a less distant past, the 1970s, and now aspects of the popular culture of that decade look dated and strange and even absurd to us from our vantage point of the 2010s. Burton’s Barnabas seems out of place in the 1970s, but we in 2012 would not fit in that easily either, nor might we want to. Barnabas’s teenage cousin Carolyn sneers that he is “weird,” but so are the 1970s as Burton pictures them. Moreover, despite Barnabas’s many faux pas in the movie, his gentlemanly manners from another century still seem admirable in this new setting. Barnabas’s courtly manners endure well over the passage of time, whereas so much of the 1970s culture that the movie pictures has fallen from fashion and nearly disappeared. If Barnabas’s personal style makes him a “weird” outsider in 1970s Collinsport, the film seems to be saying that’s a good thing, better than adopting the trappings of 1970s culture, which is what the movie finds to be truly weird.

This is an aspect of Barnabas that Burton, Depp, and Grahame-Smith have perceptively recognized and emphasize: Barnabas as the model of a true gentleman, who has carried his sense of proper behavior and style, and indeed his own moral code, including devotion to family, into a new and more vulgar time period.

It might be helpful to regard Burton and Depp’s Barnabas as an older, less innocent version of their earlier character, Edward Scissorhands, another “weird” outcast, an innocent good person who tries to fit into a conventional society that is itself rather odd—that film’s caricature of 1950s-1960s style suburbia—but is handicapped by his own potential to destroy and kill, represented by the knives he possesses instead of hands.

And what of Barnabas’s own murderous side? As in the original series, it is the witch Angelique who, jealous that her former lover Barnabas had rejected her in favor of Josette, transformed him into a vampire. In Burton’s film Barnabas blames Angelique for the killing he has done.

Dark Shadows creator Dan Curtis introduced Barnabas into the series as a villain, but within a year Barnabas had wreaked a revolution in vampire fiction. He became a “reluctant vampire,” a good man who was forced to attack victims die to the curse placed upon him. Whereas Dracula and vampires up until then seemed willingly to kill their victims, Barnabas was depicted as a victim himself of the curse. His vampiric bloodlust was depicted by both the writers and by actor Jonathan Frid as an addiction, as if to alcohol or drugs. The rising use of drugs was a phenomenon of the 1960s; this mat be another way in which Dark Shadows tapped into the zeitgeist of that decade.

Regular viewers of the original TV show are familiar with one of its recurring tropes, a scene that was repeated with variations numerous times in the course of the series. A young woman on the Collinsport docks, sometimes implied to be a prostitute, encounters Barnabas. They strike up a conversation. Barnabas turns hesitant, and tries repeatedly, even desperately, to break off the conversation and get away, but the woman persists in flirting with him. Then it is as if a switch is flipped in Barnabas’s mind; he has passed the point of no return, and the addiction takes control. His face and manner turn sinister and predatory, and then he bares his fangs and attacks.

Jonathan Frid was excellent at performing Barnabas’s struggle with his addiction as well as his sense of guilt and self-hatred after being compelled to give in to it.

But what about Depp? When the workmen free him from his coffin early in the film, Depp’s Barnabas informs them in a matter-of-fact tone of voice that he is sorry, but he is very thirsty, and then proceeds to slaughter them all. In previous versions it was Willie Loomis alone who found and released Barnabas, who then bit him, putting Willie under his control, but did not kill him. It makes a certain amount of sense that in Burton’s film Barnabas kills so many people on first being freed; after nearly two centuries of confinement, a vampire must need a lot of blood and quickly. Why the workmen do not rise again as vampires is not explained.

But Depp’s Barnabas shows no sign of struggling with his conscience before or after he attacks and kills those men. Indeed, his matter-of-fact manner when he tells then he is about to kill them shows no sign of emotion whatsoever.

Similarly, Barnabas later encounters a group of hippies. (Not only does this movie try to find humor in 1970s pop culture cliches, but drags in one from the 1960s as well.) And he ends his conversation with them by informing them that he is about to kill them all, as he proceeds to do. Again, Burton and Depp do not have Barnabas display any emotion at all when he delivers this line, not predatory bloodlust nor anguish over being unable to control his predatory urges nor shame over them. Burton and Depp seem to be playing Barnabas’s deadpan declaration of mass murder to get a laugh out of the audience. But why should we laugh at the deaths of these hippies. If you are to take this story seriously, Barnabas is murdering people, not abstract objects of 1960s pop culture.

As in previous versions of Dark Shadows, Dr. Julia Hoffman attempts to cure Barnabas, and succeeds to the extent that he is able to walk outside in daylight. (The movie does not make it clear why Barnabas is able to exist in sunlight at some points in the movie and not in others, and New York Times critic Manohla Dargis pointed to the seeming inconsistency without realizing the reason for it in the plot.) In the Burton film Barnabas discovers that Julia’s real motive is to use his blood to make herself immortal; angered at this betrayal, he murders her. Later, Barnabas claims that by putting the curse on him, Angelique is responsible for this as well as his other killings. But is she? When Barnabas killed Julia I got no sense that he was being driven to do it by forces beyond his control. He never shows regret over murdering her, and keeps her death a secret. Watching the movie, I wondered if at this point Burton was trying to get the audience to turn against Barnabas. Was this a turning point at which we are to regard Barnabas as a villain, as in Curtis’s House of Dark Shadows, when the murder of Julia marks Barnabas’s reversion to evil? But no, Burton and Depp continue to present Barnabas as the movie’s hero, as if the murder of Julia had no moral consequences.

At one point earlier in the movie, Depp’s Barnabas tells Michelle Pfeiffer’s Elizabeth about his curse and how it forces him to kill, and Depp does let anguish show in his voice and manner. But Burton and Depp subvert the dramatic impact by having Barnabas hit his head repeatedly against the keyboard of an electric piano, producing discordant notes until Elizabeth turns it off. Thus Burton and Depp turn Barnabas’s agony over his curse, something at the core of the character in previous versions of Dark Shadows, into an unfunny joke. One must draw the conclusion that they simply don’t care about the tragic side of Barnabas, and hence about the essence of this character they claim to love.

And just why is Depp’s Barnabas telling Elizabeth that he is a vampire, anyway? In previous versions of Dark Shadows Barnabas hid the fact that he was a vampire from the present day members of the Collins family, claiming instead to be a “cousin from England,” the lookalike descendant of the 18th century Barnabas. The initial reason why is clear: he didn’t want to be hunted down and destroyed as a menace. When Barnabas evolved into the guilt-ridden vampiric antihero of the series, another reason was implicit: Barnabas’s deep shame over his curse. This is another aspect of Barnabas’s character that one would have assumed was essential. But Burton and Depp’s Barnabas freely admits what he is to Elizabeth, and it is she who has to get him to agree not to tell anyone else. But Barnabas seemingly cannot help himself, and keeps talking about his secret to other members of the family (who don’t realize he’s talking about being a vampire) and to those hippies (who end up dead). Despite Barnabas’s supernatural hypnotic powers, Dr. Hoffman is able to hypnotize him easily; this is hard to believe, but Burton and Depp seem unable to resist such a cheap joke. But she didn’t have to hypnotize this Barnabas to find out that he is a vampire; all she had to do was just listen to his dinner table conversation! So where is this Barnabas’s sense of guilt and shame?

Or his wish to disguise his true nature? In the previous versions Barnabas sought to pass as a modern day human, and apart from his unusual hair style, he looked the part. Depp’s Barnabas has a more extreme version of Barnabas’s bangs, chalk-white skin, and long, claw-like fingernails, and appears in public in 18th century costume! (I have seen concept drawings that Burton did of Barnabas Collins; he pictured Barnabas as something of a cartoon-like figure.) If the good people of Collinsport believed in vampires, as they seemingly come to do in the course of the film, then Barnabas is the obvious suspect. And if Burton and Depp intend to do a sequel (as the final revelation about Dr. Hoffman seems to set up), isn’t it a problem that the townspeople all seem to know in the film’s last act that Barnabas is a vampire? And I do hope that since Burton sets Collinwood, the mansion where the family lives, that the fire department arrives after the closing credits to put out the blaze. Even Burton admitted in an interview that Collinwood is essential to Dark Shadows.

But Burton’s Dark Shadows does get some things about Barnabas right. For one thing, Angelique tells him that they are both “monsters.” Josette, the woman that Barnabas loves, represents the nobility and goodness to which Barnabas aspires. But Barnabas’s vampirism represents and brings out his potential for violence and ruthlessness. Arguably, he and Angelique are alike in that both are capable both of passionate and obsessive love and of terrible violence and vengefulness.

For another, Depp’s Barnabas tells Elizabeth that he values family and will be a protector of the Collins family of modern times. That was indeed one of Barnabas’s principal motivations in the original television series after he became its hero: he was the guardian and defender of his family and friends, who would risk his existence for them. This is something that even Dan Curtis omitted in House of Dark Shadows, in which Barnabas even slew two members of his own family. But to the credit of Burton, Depp, and Grahame-Smith, they get this aspect of Barnabas Collins’ personality right. And in a future “Comics in Context” about Burton’s Dark Shadows movie I will explore how the film handles the other members of the Collins family and other principal characters.

“Comics in Context” #244
Copyright 2012 Peter Sanderson

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In conjunction with Fox, we’re giving away three (3) copies of WHITE COLLAR: SEASON 3 on DVD.

Contest ends at 11:59pm EST on Wednesday, June 13th.

Official Rules

No member of FRED Entertainment or their immediate families may enter.

No Purchase necessary to win.

Must be 18 years of age or older to enter.

One entry per day, per person.

All submitted entries must be received by 11:59pm EST on Wednesday, June 13th.

The winner must allow 4-6 weeks after notification of win to receive the product.

In conjunction with Fox, we’re giving away three (3) copies of BURN NOTICE: SEASON 5 on DVD.

Contest ends at 11:59pm EST on Wednesday, June 13th.

Official Rules

No member of FRED Entertainment or their immediate families may enter.

No Purchase necessary to win.

Must be 18 years of age or older to enter.

One entry per day, per person.

All submitted entries must be received by 11:59pm EST on Wednesday, June 13th.

The winner must allow 4-6 weeks after notification of win to receive the product.

Ever wonder what it would have been like if Shatner played C-3PO? Cartoon Voice Actors read the script to Star Wars…

I’m Ken Plume, and soon you’ll be listening to “A Bit Of A Chat” with me, Ken Plume.

In this episode, I have a chat with comedy icon Dave Thomas about SCTV, Johnny Carson, Bob Hope, Bob and Doug, John Candy, and the deep south.

Hope you enjoy…

Download “A Bit of a Chat with Ken Plume & Dave Thomas“:

SUBSCRIBE
Subscribe to this Podcast via iTunes

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Drop Ken a line HERE.

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You can also find more of my interviews at FRED by clicking HERE, and my personal interview archive at Tibby’s Bowl by clicking HERE.

Hey! Here’s a new Doctor Who “minisode” for you…

I’m Ken Plume, and soon you’ll be listening to “A Bit Of A Chat” with me, Ken Plume.

In this episode, I have a chat with 1/3 of the comedy troupe Derrick and host of The Anytime Show, writer and actor Dominic Dierkes, about stinky cheddar, automated outrage, The Mosey, The Fiesta, Mango, and Bill Murray.

Be sure to visit his official site at www.AnytimeShow.com.

Hope you enjoy…

Download “A Bit of a Chat with Ken Plume & Dominic Dierkes 2“:

SUBSCRIBE
Subscribe to this Podcast via iTunes

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Drop Ken a line HERE.

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You can also find more of my interviews at FRED by clicking HERE, and my personal interview archive at Tibby’s Bowl by clicking HERE.

Bill Murray as FDR? Sold. …

My favorite Bee Gees song is their first hit, long before disco made them a punchline in many people’s minds …

By Christopher Stipp

The Archives, Right Here

Check out my other column, This Week In Trailers, at SlashFilm.com and follow me onTWITTER under the name: Stipp

DALLAS HALLAM and PATRICK HORVATH of ENTRANCE

It absolutely reminded me of something that Ti West would have put out. Oddly, West is hosting a Q&A with directors Patrick Horvath and Dallas Hallam this Friday night, the 18th, in LA at the Downtown Independent and it’s so fitting. A movie about a woman who is living an isolated existence and feels disconnected to the environment around her. When her solitary life is interrupted by the very worst kind of interruption, life goes south and what was a quiet portrait of a lovely woman turns into a deranged expose of evil. I had a chance to talk to Patrick and Dallas about their film, their relative newness on the scene, and what the future holds for a couple of guys looking to redefine what horror should be.

ENTRANCE is in theaters and On Demand starting today

DALLAS HALLAM: Hi, Christopher, I’m Dallas Hallam.

PATRICK HORVATH: Hi Christopher, I’m Patrick Horvath

CHRISTOPHER STIPP: Hi, how are you doing?

HALLAM: Doing alright. How are you doing?

CS: Doing well, thank you. I’ll just launch right into it I got to see the movie a few days ago and was really wowed by it.

HALLAM AND HORVATH: Very cool, thank you so much, Christopher

CS: Really loved it. I’m sure people have brought it up – that there are elements of TI WEST in there – that you seem to really be going back to making horror films that are moving away from torture porn and trying to make it more cerebral, more visceral.

HALLAM AND HORVATH: We really appreciate hearing that. Thank you. It can get frustrating after a while when you see a movie coming out that is just there because they thought if we do that and the other we will get people to come watch it but we were lucky enough to be at the same festival where The Innkeepers was playing and part of what they do every year is fly all the directors up and hang out and get drunk at this ranch. So that’s why we were actually able to hang out with Ti and get to know him better as well.

CS: So is this a genre that, much like Ti works in it movie after movie, is this something that you feel comfortable with sticking around in or is it something more like a one and done – out of your system and you want to go into something else?

HALLAM AND HORVATH: We’re definitely going to stick around with horror films. I made a zombie film back in 2008 – I think we love horror but love all sorts of films – we’re huge film buffs and to be honest in the future we want to make all sorts of movies. And what we were saying about the businessman’s aspect of horror films, is that it’s sort of the symptom of how easily accessible – they are very visceral and very easy to jump on to. A bonus to that is that you don’t necessarily have to have big names in the film in order to be successful. It’s honestly why a lot of directors end up starting off in horror for sure. But yea, horror is definitely a genre that we both love. And going into the future we will definitely be working in horror again but we would love to work in other stuff as well.

CS: Speak to me about how you two came together. It’s interesting that you both co-directed and co-wrote the movie, what brought you two together to say, “Hey, why don’t we make a movie and co-direct it with one another?”

HALLAM: Almost a decade ago at film school at the University of Iowa we had similar interest, we had a band together, made films together and worked together and then Pat went to Chicago and I went to LA and a couple years later Pat came to LA and we just kept in touch. I never thought that we would co-direct together but we would help out with each other’s projects.

HORVATH: We would help out in anyway we could.

HALLAM: To answer your question, I don’t even know the answer – just instinct. It came about because something else fell apart and I don’t even remember asking Pat if he could co-direct. I just said how about this thing and we’ll co-direct together and blah blah blah. And it just came out like that. Just instinct. And since then what I’ve learned is that we really compliment each other. The things we’re good at we make better for each other, things we’re not good at, we cancel out each other. We compliment each other and love working with each other.

CS: So take me though the steps of actually putting rubber to the road after the script was written. You wanted to direct it and I know, Patrick, you directed before, Dallas not so much, but what was the process like of actually getting this off the ground and finding Suziey and getting this thing shot?

HORVATH: Necessity is the mother of invention – Dallas had basically secured a good chunk of change, about $6,000 bucks and that’s what we went in to shoot it with. But we wanted to make something and for different reasons his project fell apart, whether because people backing out or their schedules not working, so then we had the desire to run in and make something and we had a time limit because we were both still working. I’m actually at my day job right now. We had a window of a month and a half and came home from work and Dallas already had a tiny idea of, “Hey, what if we made a horror film?” And immediately I liked it a lot. We took a couple weeks and pounded out what would be used as a script and then we pretty much, the whole film, was made from necessity. All the characters that were involved were accessible and agents were accessible and throughout the whole film we came up with all these stylistic rules formed by other films that we were inspired by. Just to keep the whole thing moving – we shot in 12 days. Suziey was working, she would work all day, come back, and we would shoot her at night.

HALLAM: I actually met Suziey while casting my ill-fated projected that fell apart. She wasn’t right for that project so I didn’t cast her but she was a nice person. And I remember when I told her she didn’t get the part she vehemently told me I was wrong and that she was the right person for it. She had such gusto and she was so terrific – she had such a spark and was so right for this thing I just said, you don’t have to cast the lead, I got her. I said Pat and I share the same brain and he just trusted me and she was totally right. Everbody else just came once we started making the film. Suziey had to have a job and it turns out she worked for a coffee shop and we could shoot there at night so now her character works at a coffee shop.

CS: It’s interesting you mentioned about the script, it’s so much a departure that many people would classify as a horror kind of movie. It really takes a step back in that we are just really watching her live and things happen here and there that kind of lead up to the third act when things really start coming together in a huge way. When you were putting the script together did it materialize the way you saw it as you were writing it as you see the finished product now?

HALLAM: Very much so. We knew that we couldn’t write out a full dialogue of scripts and have the time to activate that by shooting it. What we focused on was a very detailed plot point list and all these pieces that we needed. It was a very collaborative process of improvisation in rehearsals that we got the dialogue to where it is. We just had all these rules and because of the rules what we ended up getting back was better than what we thought it would be.

HORVATH: It was funny because the rules set us free in a way. By chaining ourselves to a strict style and the strict way of making the movie set us free and kind of feels more real because of it. We never attempted anything in the movie that we couldn’t pull off with $6,000.00. We tried to make a movie that could have been made for any amount of money. We didn’t want people to go this is a little movie. We wanted to just enjoy it. So I guess to answer your question, the style in the end was exactly what we pictured.

CS: Once you had the finished product and thankfully IFC has come in and is giving it a nice push, when did you know – every filmmaker thinks this is going to be great and get recognized as a great film and take us places – at what point did you think you really had something special with this movie?

HORVATH: I don’t think we ever did. We made it and we both loved what we made. But, at the same time, we have worked on projects that just don’t get around and I think a lot of it has to do with, I don’t want to say luck necessarily, but you really do have to wait for an opportunity to help push you along.

HALLAM: There were times when I thought, is this really good or am I too close to it? I can’t tell. It always felt like it was a part of my soul. When we were finished we immediately rented out a theatre to screen it – just to screen it, which is the way to do it. I think the first time we saw it with an audience we got a real strong reaction from the audience. That was the first time we thought we really had something rad on our hands. And then after that, it was a slow process. I have a friend who is a sales rep and I want to show it to him and he had a positive response and also once we got into the Los Angeles Film Festival – that was a very gratifying response and pleased that it sold out. I think by that point, we thought that this was more success that we had ever had with anything.

CS: So now the movie is finished and you’ve seen the critical reception of it, what do you think a) about the finished piece and b) has it made you think about what will be next for the two of you together?

HORVATH: I must admit and I think that all artists do have moments of insecurity, before every showing I would look at Pat and say did we trick everybody? Is someone going to pull the clothes off of us and say this isn’t good? It feels good and reactions are good and I realize it’s just the normal insecurities people go through.

HALLAM: This is not a film for everybody. It’s definitely a film that we would like to see. I always enjoy watching it and think at the end of the day it didn’t take that much money to make it and it will last forever and we have long lasting relationships making it and I can say we will work with Suziey Block the rest of our lives. We owe her so much. Her performance is so great. Without her the film wouldn’t be anything. We probably would be here today talking to you. And we’ll keep those things with us forever.

HORVATH: Moving ahead, we’re well into a script that we’ve been working on and hopefully will increase interest and that’s actually going to be Christmas – like a dysfunctional Christmas family film that goes off the rails and go into extreme horror with a capital H.

(LAUGHS)

HALLAM: And a different kind of style. Our next film with have some tripods, a musical score. We want to make – I don’t want to say traditional – but something that pushes the envelope of horror, we will always do that but the bombstic score and the style of the film will be what you would think of as a horror movie.