Hey, humans. How's it going? Susan Ruth here. Thanks for listening to another episode of Hey Human podcast. This is episode 442, and my guest is Shane Peter Day, also known as Shane Day, also known as Shane Peter Jeffrey Day, depending on where you're looking. Shane is a writer, director, and producer. We met at a film festival in Ohio, nightmares fest, a great festival, and he told me about his adventures following in the footsteps of the beat writers, like Jack Kerouac, for example.
His stories intrigued me so much. I was excited to have him on the show. I asked. He said, yes, and, we chatted for quite a while. Such an interesting guy. Has had a quite a fascinating life. His most recent film, The Neighborhood at the End of the World, is making its rounds in film festivals now. Check out heyhumanpodcast.com for links and to learn more about my guests and the show. Hey Human Podcast is on YouTube under official Susan Ruth. I'm on patreon at susanruthism.
My TikTok and Instagram and blue sky is susanruthism. Check out susanruth.com to learn more about me and my other artistic endeavors, and find my albums, my music on Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon Music, wherever you get your music. Rate, review, and subscribe to Hey Human podcast on Apple, Iheart, and Spotify podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. And thank you for listening. Here we go. Shane Day, welcome to Hey Human. Thank you very much, Susan, for having me. It's lovely to see you again.
Yeah. You too. This is great. We met in, Columbus, Ohio at the Nightmares Film Festival, and your film, The Neighborhood at the End of the World, got to be shown there. It was such a great festival. We've this past month, we've been to, jumping around to a bunch of festivals, and that one was absolutely one of the
highlights. We've actually had a couple of movies play in the past years, but were never able to travel for them, one of which was mid pandemic, and then at that point, nightmares was online, and so we didn't get to travel. So this time, we we didn't miss it. Once we got accepted, we jumped down. Yeah. We got our flights, everything. Yeah. And I and and worth it. It was amazing. Everyone was so nice. All of the filmmakers treat each other with such
high regard. It's it's lovely. I love the horror scene for that. Yeah. And congratulations on your new award. I saw that this morning. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you. That was that one was very welcome. That one, we received very warmly. When we made the film, or at least when we were thinking about the film, we knew we wanted to make something that was bloody and fun, basically, and with a specific target in mind, which was Luchagore Productions.
They make their films out of Vancouver here, and Mexico, of course, but I was a big fan of theirs and have since become friends with the the director, Gigi. So I really wanted to make something that they would watch and think was decent. And so the fact that they programmed ours in the most recent Chilliwack Independent Film Festival, and this was the 1st year for the genre of film award. So that and it was presented by Luchigore. So for us, it was just a treat to
it's the 1st year for that award. It was presented by Gigi, and it was a movie that, again, the target was Gigi. So, so it just felt great. Like, all around, that one felt really good. Well, congratulations. It's such a cool looking award too. It is really cool. Yeah. It's fun to see going to all these festivals and seeing their awards, you know, when you get them. And I have my little shelf and but they're all so different and so cool looking. And I
love it. Yeah. Yeah. We also a couple of weeks ago, there was another one called VHS, the Vancouver Horror Show. And there as well, we won best BC short. And the award itself is an old VHS cassette with our poster on it and everything. It's not an easy one to mount because it's literally a VHS cassette. So I'm I'm hoping to make like some kind of base that I can put it in, but it still looks cool. Like to have this golden
VHS with our poster on it. I I do love how every festival, especially in the horror genre, the awards always look cool. Like I'm always excited to see what they look like. When we were talking at the festival, of course, you mentioned something to me, and we'll we'll get to that, that I thought was so intriguing. And and I'm so excited to hear all about that too. So but let's start at the beginning. Tell me about childhood. Well, I grew up in, a small fishing town in, Ontario
Ontario, Canada where, it's called Hastings. Both 1,000 people roughly. My mom and my brother, my older brother worked at and managed a small video store. And so for me, I grew up more or less in a pretty rural environment with pretty I mean, in my experience at the time, a pretty decent video store and library. And as the youngest of my family, complete freedom to just wander the fields and the river and what on
my own. So I had a pretty, I will say, a pretty good, comfortable childhood, in that I cultivated a love for literature and film very early on, and have not let go. I am being the youngest child myself. I get the theory of the door opens. We'll see you when it gets dark out, maybe. I get Yeah. I was a latchkey kid. Yeah. Totally. Yeah. Did did you have any mechanisms of, oh, you can't look at that or you can't read that, or were you really a free range child? Like, I
Yeah. I was very free range. I, so it was the eighties, and it was the golden kinda moment for, like, Stephen King straight to TV made movies. So I was able to watch all those live, like, on TV. And I again, so I was 81, and when some of them were coming out, it was, like, mid eighties, the end of the eighties, which meant I'm quite young. But I watched them I watched everyone live with my mom and with my brother.
I would always rent pretty trashy violent horror films with no no censor censorship from anybody. But I will say what's funny, the only movie that was ever denied me, and this was my father, so it's it's a whole other story perhaps, but was Eddie Murphy's Raw. His stand up his stand up movie, Raw, was the only movie as a kid that I was not ever allowed to watch. And years years went by, and I just never watched it, and I and it got to a point where I was, like, I I just I didn't care to seek it
out anymore. I was on to other things. But I finally did watch it when I was, I probably early twenties, and it just didn't land for me. And I just remember thinking, like, this was the movie that I was never allowed to watch, yet the very first movie I remember watching as a kid was Nightmare on Elm Street. It's kinda just funny to think that I was not denied horror. And also, my brother would always buy new Stephen King novels, so I read Stephen King novels as a kid
as well. So that stuff was never denied to me. There's movies that I still haven't watched only because my family was watching, and I just decided I wanted to go outside and play. Not because they were scary or traumatizing, I just wasn't in the mood, but yet I know they were just more horror movies that, were constantly circulating through my house. My mom wouldn't let me read. I I also was a free range. My parents basically, by the time I came along, they
were just tired, I guess. But Yeah. And house full of books, library, card, movies, all the cable stations, everything like that. But my mom wouldn't let me read it. She said she said, I don't wanna be the one with you in the nightmares. I'm sure there were a couple that left me a little scarred to some degree, but don't think I
was too affected by the books. Because, yeah, like I said, like, I, like, read lots of Christopher Pike or, R. L. Stine or Dean Koontz and Stephen King and different Clive Clive Barker. There was one author, Peter James, not the current famous Peter James. It's a different author, I think. British author who used to write some pretty fun horror that, again, as a young person, I loved. I don't know if they hold up now. That author had a couple of moments in his books that absolutely did scare me.
Yeah. But I can't I don't think any of the Stephen King ones did. I oddly enough, they they never left me with any scars or anything. Was your group of friends into horror also? I was definitely the weirdo, but not like, it was it was a kind of a comfortable and warmly embraced weirdo. I was always the one introducing my friends to pretty messed up movies.
I remember when we were 14, showing some of my friends Clockwork Orange for the first time, and these were new friends in high school who had no idea who I was, so for them it was traumatizing. Yeah, that's a big movie. Yeah. And again, I had already seen it,
I had owned it at that point. When I think back on it, part of why I'm really pushing forward with horror now, after several years of travel and other, and school and other things, is I suppose partially because I finally have found a horror community of people that have made me feel more like that's it's a good thing to be in horror. Like, it's not you're not a weirdo so much. Like, I had teachers and adults all my life who were always wondering why I wrote horror short stories.
They're always wondering, like, why why is that your thing? And I I never had an answer. It was just the thing I would like to do and the thing that came in my imagination. Adults made me feel like a weirdo. Whereas now now I finally found a community of people who love horror, and I'm just running with it because it just feels good to to celebrate horror with people. When did you write your first story? Probably grade 2. Oh, young. What is that? How yeah. How old is that?
Grade 2 would be around 6 or 7, I guess. 7, maybe? 7, 8? And I remember it was called the cat from hell, and, Otherwise known as the cat. Yeah. Well, exactly, like Cats are little demons. I love them, but they could be demons. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. I don't recall too much about the story and what happened. I do know that there was a moment in it where my brother dies, the cat killed the my brother, so I
had to try to kill the cat. And I remember there's a moment what the only thing I remember was that I wrote the line, it's time to send you back to hell. And when I got my teacher to read it, I remember being so tense that she was going to get reprimand me for that. But she didn't at all. Like, she even read it out loud to me, like, while we're sitting together. And when she got to that line, she just kinda kept going past it. And I remember thinking, like, okay, so
I guess that's okay. Like, I guess I'm in the clear. What a joy that you had, firstly, to grow up in a place where you were in a video store all the time, where your family was in a video store, that to me is kid that's the like in the kid in a candy store. Yeah. That's exactly what it was. Yeah. What a great way to give you a fertile mind. But I can only imagine the adults, as you mentioned, looking at you killing off members of your family thinking psychotherapy maybe is good for this kid.
It's it's funny you say that because just the other day I was talking to my partner about how my grandmother and one of my aunts did have a moment where they were concerned about me, because I think I was about 13 or 14 when I I wrote an attempt at writing a novel. They were looking at some of the language within it, and so they absolutely were a little concerned because of the language I was using, but obviously that didn't amount to, I don't think.
I don't think I'm I've turned into any kind of weird adult, but, No more weird than the rest of us. Well, I was just gonna say kinda kinda sadly. Like, sometimes I wish I was a bit weirder. Feel like I'm a bit sober. Vanilla. That's against you get out all your demons in That's right. This genre. That's right. And I always have. Tell me about when you discovered Jack Kerouac. That was early high school. It most likely was the
book on the road. There was a point where kind of like an obsessive sort of dive, deep dive, where I just threw myself into the beats, mid high school, like around grade 10 or 11 or somewhere around there, and I just ate everything I could, like,
from obviously from, like, the famous ones. But everyone, even to Carolyn Cassidy, I tracked down her her version her off the road novel, and, yeah, I was just consuming anything by the beats to the point that my my graduation quote is from, is from Kerouac. 2 days after graduation, me and a few of my friends hitchhiked through the states to California and lived in California for a couple of months in trees and under buildings and stuff, trying to get that flavor
that of the beets that we just fell in love with. And yeah, and I just kept following. I even followed it around the world for a while at one point living in Paris, and I was gifted magically an opportunity to live in a, Shakespeare and Co, that bookstore across from Notre Dame.
I got to live in the room that Lawrence Ferlinghetti and Burrows and Bukowski and different people all wrote from, so So that was just like another magical gift from just being a hitchhiker and saying the right thing, basically, to somebody. So, yeah, that's that definitely that journey kinda continues to follow me around. That's such an intriguing thing to decide to
do. I'm curious how your family reacted to that, and also, I'd love to hear some anecdotal instances, especially for a hitchhiker because that that comes with its own level of horror, I would imagine at some points. But tell me tell me some stories around this. I don't know what it is exactly, but I've I feel like I've generally been safe all my life. Like, I I put myself in pretty harrowing,
situations. But when when I try to recall the scary or tense situations, I actually do struggle to find good examples because for the most part, I've been pretty lucky. I mean, there's definitely been people who appear and you don't know what to make of them, and you spend a good half hour or so wondering what's this person's deal. But for the most part, everything's everything always kinda went
pretty well. Like I have nothing but positive things to say, like meeting unhoused people who actually came to inspire some of my philosophies, you know? For example? There was one person called Babylon Bob. Amazing that I remember that. There was one person named Babylon Bob, who I met in under Cannery Row in Monterey, California there. We were living under some building, like, right by the coast, it was a derelict building.
1 of the people who came to basically sleep down there with us was a man named Babylon Bob, and he was just wonderful and terrific. Like, kind of a Walt Whitman type, you know, long beard, very confident and kinda beautiful in their in their old age. But just had a very beautiful philosophy on the way way to interact with a society that's constantly needs more from you, but gives less back. And I think characters like him and having the opportunity to talk to him because he didn't
again, he was he was unhoused. I don't I wouldn't say he was homeless, because he had a beautiful community of people around him and that he called home, so his whole view of just kind of living simply and and warmly and openly, I think, has just carried forward with me ever since. And, yeah, it's just kinda paid off. Like, I and and try to try to give that back wherever you can whenever you meet a stranger who just just either needs an ear or they just need a single word of uplifting
something, you know? How did you support this lifestyle? Because you had to eat and things. Yeah. We we actually, at at several points, we stayed with Hare Krishnas in their temples. So we would stay there, or we would find gardens or farmland that we would sleep in, and then kinda just find food not bombs or different people, like food places that are offering it, and just kinda learned how to eat simply and
and, yeah, and just sustainably for ourselves. For several months, I I think I I think I went with $45 in my pocket. Like, I left Ontario with $45 in my pocket and spent several months on that somehow.
But that was the goal. The goal was to go with nothing and see what how we could survive, and I think we just did, again, off the whether it was the kindness of strangers or lucky circumstance of, you know, being in the right park at the right time when people are offering food and How many were with you? There were 6 of us total, and we we hitchhiked in pairs, but we managed to always stay grouped. Like, even if one got dropped off hours later, we would just always magically regroup
without really any effort. This was before cell phones and everything else, so, yeah, we stayed together the entire time. We we lived in, Big Sur for a while together, and we just camped out there, and then eventually we all hitchhiked back up into Canada, at which point I had family here in BC, so my uncle took me in, and wildly took my friends in as well. So he let us have the basement for a couple of weeks while we basically regrouped and got ourselves, you know, ready to either
move on or whatever it was. Yeah. There were so in in in the end, there were 6 of us, and, they're still they're still very close to me, like, they're still members of my heart deeply. Yeah. How do you disengage from a lifestyle like that? And also, what was it like with the Hare Krishnas? The Hare Krishnas were lovely. I my one of my basically, my first girlfriend that I ever had in high school was a Hare Krishna girl, and, I became very tight with her family.
And I I loved while I was learning about the beats and I was learning about existentialism and such, I was also learning about, Eastern philosophies. And then when Hari Krishna came in, it just really seemed to slot in nice and easily. And it was just, again, it was something new to to absorb, and I think that was the thing about my group of friends was we were sponges for information and and knowledge. And so for us, it was
kind of a no brainer. This is something new to us, and we're saying yes to it. And they were they were amazing. They took us in. They fed us. We took part in their their festivities. I will say there was one funny story, however, though, I was reading at the time, I was reading this is gonna sound very strange for a Hare Krishna temple, but I was reading, Helter Skelter at the time. Oh. And, because it just happened to me again. I'm
going to California. I'm gonna take Helter Skelter with me for whatever sick reason. 1 of the Hare Krishna fellas saw me reading it and was wondering why I would choose that over the Bhagavad Gita. And I was like, well, you know, I'm a reader. I read endlessly. And he's like, yeah, but there's only one book that you should ever, use give your time to. And he's like, okay. Okay. I get it. But that was that was probably the only moment where there was, like, any kind of,
not discrepancy, but, like Yeah. Little conflict of who I was in that space. Yeah. Have you read the Barhad Veda? It's beautiful. I have. Yes. Yeah. It's really lovely. It is really lovely. I don't think it would be the only book I'd ever wanna read, but it's very lovely. That's just it. Well, that's just it because there's also the Mahabharata and the Ramayana. You know, like, those books just throw those in with that that list. Okay. So what was your mode to disentangle
from that life? Because I imagine it shaped you deeply, especially because you were young and we live in a consumer forward world. So how does one make that transition? It's a good question. I would say my answer was a long one, to be honest. It was a long journey, really, because after that, I hitchhiked back and forth across Canada a lot trying to see more of it as well, and I did that over the years.
And then eventually I ended up traveling into Europe and doing it for a couple years, and hitchhiking as well there and other things, which eventually led into Egypt and Jordan, and then India and Southeast Asia. And it just I kinda kept going for a total of I think it was total of 5 years. And in that, I started obviously maturing. I started getting more of a desire to have some rooted space for myself, especially because I really wanted to
arrange my library. I I desperately just wanted a space for my books, so that desire to have a space and kind of get working in in culture, in society, started growing more and festering. And by the end of my journey, I was teaching English in Indonesia, and as a result, I think I started warming up to the idea that it's time to get back to and also to finally time to actually attack my goals, which was to be a writer and to be a
filmmaker. And it so I which is was really difficult while traveling, obviously. So I think that had a lot to do with it. I was just starting to feel like, okay, I've had a lot of experiences. I've met a lot of people and heard a lot of good stories, but I think it's time for me to start actually trying to channel my thoughts and channel all of these stories that I have, you know, brewing in my heart. I need to get them down somewhere and start sharing and learn
and also learn how to communicate back. Basically, it was it was a good test, all my travels, to learn how to listen, but now I I wanted to learn how to speak and express, and I think that had a lot to do with it. And so and also all of those adventures, I think, in some ways, really did help strip me of judgement and expectations and other things of other people. So I started to look back into what my my ideologies were, and to hopefully throw them away and start
fresh. And so I think that had a lot to do with it, was to finally come back around and be like, okay. I'm not I'm not a young I'm not a young beatnik anymore. You know? I I need to cultivate something else now. And I think what I what I wanted to do is cultivate a film community, and and keep kind of supporting other artists that I knew, as well as learning how to collaborate and create a community with it. So I think that became more important to me than than standing by an ideology of anti
anything, really. Were there women traveling in your group of 6? There was. Yeah. We were an even split. One of the no, there was 2 couples. Actually, no, there was 8 of us, not 6 of us. There was 2 couples and 2 men and 2 women who weren't couples. So yeah, it was actually 8 people, not 6. And yeah. Yeah. Then we had women with us, and I can't obviously speak for them, but in terms of overall comfort and safety and all that, I think
we're all pretty good. Like, I I don't think we ever had any issues amongst ourselves. And since we were always together, I can't I don't foresee that anything else came from any kind of shadows that I missed or anything. Yeah. I'm sure traveling in a pack is much safer than women traveling alone and having that experience. Was your family growing up religious at all? Was there any sort of ideology or philosophy that you had to either embrace and or shun in order to go off on your adventure?
Yeah. Actually, we were Roman Catholic, and I actually loved being Roman Catholic for the most of my childhood, and I think also just my inquisitive mind just kinda led me towards recognizing I'm not Roman Catholic anymore. I still have, I I will be honest and say that I I maintain my, sort of Christ conscious sort of headspace, but when it comes to religion and all that stuff, I definitely have removed myself from any kind of organized cult,
essentially. But I am very thankful for growing up with it because I think that actually would be where my love for story started. I think my love for story started with the bible because, yeah, it was it's a fun adventure novel. You know? Oh, it's epic. Yeah. It's epic. Exactly. And, and I and I did love it. I loved going to religion class. I loved going to church. I loved hearing about it and talking about it.
But and I and I was absolutely raised with a bit of a, you know, the the the ruler as a smack, if I stepped out of line. So I definitely know, I definitely did experience kinda harsh Roman Catholic consequences. But yeah, like for the most part, I actually had a pretty good childhood when it comes to my engagement with religion. So me leaving religion behind was a very intentional conscious choice, not necessarily rejection of anything bad that happened. It just became part of
the journey of learning for me. Roman Catholics, if anyone was gonna get into horror, it'd be the Roman Catholics and their demons and their saints and all of the That's right. You know, that there's such great storytelling in that. And and honestly, everything's there. Like, anything that has since been used in in horror fiction, rampant through the bible. Right? Right. From from pretty horrendous behavior that somehow in certain parts is okay or
at least nobody really discusses anymore. I still come back to it. Like, I'll still find myself drawn to it as a story. Like, if I see a new documentary or a new book or something, an essay on religion, I'll absolutely jump in because I I still have a great love for it. As I say, as more of like a narrative Observation. Yeah. Yeah. Observer. Yeah. Yeah. Having traveled all over the world, did you have any experience with anything spooky? Yeah. Not in your head, but actually in
the world at large. Definitely smatterings of it in all of my adventures before Southeast Asia, but Southeast Asia was where I feel it was the most real. Like, it was exactly as you said. It wasn't my imagination. It wasn't my passion for ghosts or whatever. It was real because, staff housing for all the other teachers that that were teaching in Indonesia.
And I came late, so everybody kinda comes in, you know, at certain periods of the year depending on their contract, but I came in after most of them had established friendships and such. And I remember this, home a couple of nights. I, you know, go from my room to the bathroom, and it's dark, and you absolutely do feel this creeping sensation. Like, and it was intense. It wasn't just like the usual, like, it's in my head. It was actually very intense.
And you'd stop, and you'd almost you'd almost feel the presence actually is on you, and this happened often. And often, I would come out of my room and I would see a silhouette of a shadow with a top hat as somebody, and it was very real. It was there. And I'd go, I'd either leave the room or whatnot, and it would disappear, and
it would be there again, or whatever. So it happened often, and I remember later talking to the other teachers, and they all started corroborating this that they all experienced it as well, but at different times from each other, and all kept it secret until they all shared it. So once I finally shared it, I was just another person adding to this. When I left this place for years, every once in a while, I would I'd hear this buzz, almost like
flies. I'd hear this buzz around my head while I'm trying to sleep, and there was never anything there. But it would just be present, so you just kinda dismiss it. But I remember living I ended up moving to a house in Saskatchewan in the prairies, and this place was haunted. It had so many things. Like, doors that are hard to open because they're pretty wedged between the carpet and the door frame, so it's really hard to open. I'd watch those things slowly open,
like watch it. I'd just be sitting there writing at night, and it'd be opening. And so I'd experienced these buzz this buzzing again. And soon after that, I learned about the, I think it's called the tall man or the tall hat man, or The hat man is how he's generally referred to. Yeah. And it's a lot of times little kids see him. I just learned about this, and the way they describe it, even the hat, I was like,
that I saw this person. Mhmm. And then I kinda kept digging, and I learned that oftentimes if people carry their ghost or whatever the ghost gets latched on, you can tell by this buzzing sound that follows you around. And so I started putting all these pieces together, and I was like, wait, I think this is there's something to this. Like, because I'm I'm not I'm not overly skeptical, but I'm also not overly Right. Open ended, you know? So I I I can say with certainty that this one was
real. Like, I saw this thing, this spirit. I believe it was following me for a while, and I actually did believe it, like I would talk about it. And then I learned about this, and all everything fit. All the boxes fit. How'd you get rid of
them? I don't remember. We we moved to a new place, and we did do a sage spudge, and things like this, so I'm I'm assuming that, like I'm assuming something to this effect, like some of the things we did for our new environment helped perhaps, because it's never happened again since we left Saskatchewan, which was now 7 years ago. So the people in Indonesia experienced the Hat Man, and then you experienced it. So you think you brought it home from Indonesia? Yeah. Wow. Absolutely. Interesting.
My partner, she's from Saskatchewan, but she she and I met in Indonesia. So she's one of the people who who also can can corroborate that story that she saw it, plus in the same house, very fully locked, all of the women over, I don't know, it was a year or 2 years, started having underwear go missing, whether it was bras or underwear, whatnot.
And eventually, they found a way by basically climbing over the roof of, like, this building, climb over the roof into the next apartment, what do you call it, where they they're all pressed together. There's no there's no separation of alleyways or breezeways or anything. And so they went in, and it was completely
abandoned. There's nothing in it. But they found all of the underwear and all the bras and everything in neat little piles separated by color or separated by type or whatever, and the piles were large, which means that it was going on for a long time. And no no one has any idea who was doing this, because, you know, because the building was abandoned. That's terrifying. We our building was locked up. Yeah. That's terrifying. And every bedroom was was padlocked locked, you
know? Like, we had our own locks to get into the bedrooms. So, yeah, no idea how any of that happened. Vent over the head or something. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, so crazy. Messed up. Indonesia was the place where I do believe I I experienced this stuff for real, again, not just in my imagination where I can convince myself I'm in a cemetery and I we know something, Indonesia is where I believe it was real. Like, it was very, very real. And I
thought that was amazing. I thought and I I connected it to culture too because I was thinking, like, for them as well, very real. Right? It's very real, which to me means it is. Like, they whether it's manifestation or what, but, like, it's real now because to them it is. Absolutely. Well, that gives you that idea that that which you put energy into gets power and grows. And I think fear and anger, all these things can manifest into its own type of energy field. But I saw the hat man when I
was a little kid. I actually was recently curious about the hat man and did a little bit of a digging around. And there are lots of theories about it, but the one that seemed to be a common theory was that he was a a benevolent demon that would that is attracted to children who grow up in hostile environment. Oh. Interesting. Mhmm. Like a protective demon. He's considered one of the demon class, but that he's there to sort of keep an eye on children who are going through some stuff.
That was fascinating. That got me into a whole nother deep dive that there's a whole class of demons, quote unquote, who are not necessarily you think of demon and you think grass, scary, satan, whatever, but there's this whole group of demons that are really, like, worker bees. You know? One is good for fishing. One is good for, you know, dapper clothes. When it end up Yeah. Yeah. That was a fascinating read.
That's interesting to me. That actually makes me wonder about when you asked how did we lose how did we lose it, essentially, or, like, get rid of it. The house that I believe we got rid of it in, there I don't know the full story, but there was a story that so the person who we were renting from witnessed a little girl sitting on a bed watching her as she was, like, putting laundry her way or something. And and then never saw the girl again, but she always felt the girl was present.
So I wonder if if perhaps, let's say, I did bring the hat man with me, found a home where it was actually useful. It could help this this young girl's spirit from maybe some trauma that it was trapped in, and that's why I lost the Hat Man because I it left me to be for another purpose. Yeah. You know? Oh, it gives you the shimmers. That's fun. That is funny. There's a story now. You and I are both gonna go write that.
Uh-huh. I love that. I it's actually it's really I really like the idea of ghosts being passed on. Not like curses, but almost like, I don't know, like a a person, whether it's a servant or a bully or whatever it's gonna be, that it actually gets passed on to someone else now, like it took an interest elsewhere. I've interviewed people who have had those experiences where matronly, grandmotherly type ghosts tended to them as children, and then as they grew,
they went away. But then new people came into the same house and told stories of the grandmotherly ghost that would tuck them in at night. Wow. So I think that is true because and then it it begs the question, is a is a spirit whatever that is, is that energy attached to places? Space. Yeah. Or or you know, I I lived in an incredibly haunted house when I was in my twenties, and it was so haunted that I actually had to break the lease. Wow. Really? Yeah. Which I've never done I've never done it
since. Oh, god. It didn't want me there. The house did not want me there. Wow. I don't think I was the ilk it preferred. So it did everything in its power to get me out, and it worked. I I I mean, I tried everything too. I had the priest come and bless the house. And whenever my friend's dog would come over, she was she would refuse to go downstairs. You would stand at the top of the stairs and growl down the stairs. It wasn't a good place. Wow. Yeah. That I could tell you lots
of stories about that house. I've never really experienced a negative spirit. Like, so that's that's the other thing too, is that any of the spirits I've I've either legitimately interacted with or again, in my head interacted with, it's never really been any negative ones. You know? It's it's always been either safe and it's it's fun to be scared kind of vibe or it was yeah. It just was more present and there was no
real threat of danger or anything. But I've heard about this lots, obviously, like, coming from the horror genre, like, and I'm always curious about that one. Like, I'm always curious about because again, I've never experienced it, about actual bad energy or, violent energy. And so, yeah, so when it comes to that question of what you're just saying, is it is it
the space? Is it the the architecture, essentially, whether the architecture either, almost like a conduit, calls upon them or traps them or whatever it might be? Or is it the person's energy? You know, is it the person's energy that's kind of determining this type of interaction you're gonna have? I do think that spirits are attached to people. I think they'll follow them around, certainly. But, yeah, I think it's anything goes, really. Yeah. And that's what I love. Is it
all true? Who knows? Is it all not true? Who knows? But, man, you can't deny your own experience. That's right. Yeah. Yeah. And I think about things like what what if what if there was a tree and on that tree, somebody was hung, for example, and tragically was murdered. So then their essence is attached to that tree. And then a 100 years later, someone comes along and chops down that tree, turns that tree into wood, and then that wood is used to build a house.
So now it's the the being, the energy that's attached to that tree is now planks of wood Mhmm. Being used for a house. Mhmm. Maybe. I I buy that, to be honest. Like, again again, the the the creative storyteller in me has to. Like, that's the one thing that I have to always do is be open to every possibility, and just and I just love it, though. I love
I love ghost stories so much. Of all of my horror genres, like, the one that is sort of a holy grail for me is the ghost story, but because I really I want to tell a good one one day. No. Not not just to do it, but to do it with somewhat of a legacy. You know, Shirley Jackson's Haunting of Hill House, or even with Guillermo del Toro does it with The Devil's Backbone and
certain things. It's like, I wanna be able to tell a great ghost story that is rooted in human drama, essentially, you know, and and and I really wanna get there, like, get to a point where I can do that subsection of our genre, a great service of, like, telling something memorable, not just exploiting the idea of ghosts or people's fear of ghosts. Shirley Jackson is so good. I I love Shirley Jackson. I I've read everything, and I I read the Hill House often because it's magnificent to
me. Like, that's just magnificent. And that was one that really taught me in a lot of ways what a good ghost story is, and then in essence, it's often it's the people who are haunted, right? Like, it's not just about a haunted house, it's about these people in the house who themselves are haunted. And her book was the one that really taught me that because the main character is so neurotic and anxious and all these things that, in a way, she's creating her hauntings.
Yeah. And I thought that was amazing. And it really it really shone a light for me on, like, oh, this is this is how to essentially approach the ghost story. You know? Even even The Shining, like, the way that Stephen King does The Shining, it's the same thing. It's it's a haunted man, essentially. Right? Like, he's got his inner demons. And I think that's the thing that I made a ghost story a few years ago that I made an attempt at doing with respect to kind of all the things
I'm talking about. But I hadn't read Haunting of Hill House, so I didn't learn my lesson about directing the the ghosts inward. I didn't I hadn't learned that lesson yet. And so I I still think about it. I'm like, oh, I really wanna return to that story someday, but I've already made it. So I'm like, well, maybe I'll just rewrite it and give it a different title. Absolutely.
Yeah. There are no rules. I think it's interesting too that even science has come on board and said, well, teenagers who are so full of angst and hormones can cause weird things to happen, electrical abnormalities and things moving across the room. I totally buy that. My so my partner's a, grade 6, 7 teacher. Bless her. Oh, I know. Beg her for her service. Right? Yeah. And it's funny.
Some people who get it and some people don't necessarily get it right away, grade 6, 7 sounds to be the worst age. Because you're 12 to 14 or what, and all the hormones are going crazy, but you're still a child. You're still in that childish state. You're not actually quite an adolescent yet, and it just sounds nightmarish. And I think about my childhood, I'm like, yeah, that's when I was the worst. You know, that's when I was a terror to my teachers. And, yeah, I will. I'll I'll share that
with her. But, yeah, she and some of the things she tells me, I I can buy. I could I could buy what you're saying based on those energies. Like, all of those energies just crashing together. You know? Yeah. Yeah. Alright. Let's talk for a second about Neighborhood at the End of the World. What was the what was the energy around that, and what's the plan with it?
The original intention for for Neighborhood was to just essentially make a solid enough short film that would draw some attention so that I could propose some of my features that I've been writing and hoping to get funding for, and leave it as a short story. Leave it as a short film.
But since we've made it, and since it's been getting a pretty warm reception, my producing partner John Warren and I, we had a conversation about telling people that we had the intention of making it a proof of concept, because now we've come up with basically 2 completely different but equally good, I think, features based off this short.
So I've been writing both of them. I've got them both outlined, and I've got a couple drafts already, but I'm making my way through those drafts for a feature version of Neighborhood. And so at this point, now the intention is to try to find funding and go forward with it. One of them is a larger scope. It's it's one that I would need, not a significant budget, but as you know, like, a significant budget is significant. Like, it's 2,000,000 is a lot of money.
To some filmmakers, it's not, but to me, it is. Whereas the other one, the other version that we've been writing, the plan with it is to try to maybe do it on our on our own. Because we made the short on our own, and we treated it like a feature in the way that we we did have a production house. It was during the strikes, so we had 2 months of no work, and we just we worked every single day. We'd go in in the morning, and we worked every day treating this like a feature.
And so the fact that we went through this together and we had amazing heads of department working with us, and, you know, and each one of them absolutely pushed us to do better. Every time a new person came on board, it became this this additional, feeling of, okay, well, now we have to honor them. If they're now doing wardrobe or that person is now doing stunts or something, I want them to be proud of what they contributed. So it pushed us to do to basically try to make a better film
than we intended. Like, we always intended to make a good film, but by the end, we made I think we made a pretty solid, well produced film that every person could be proud of that that worked on it. And so saying all that, the the hope would be to invite everyone back and say, let's let's move forward and make this a feature together, Because I think you know as well, in Vancouver, the the talent pool is huge. There's so many great filmmakers out here, but we're a
service town. We're not really a creative town. People don't hire the writers and lead actors from Vancouver, but they hire all the service and all the labor. So there's a there's a real desire here in Vancouver for creative original content. Like, every a lot of these people here, they don't wanna just be laborers, they wanna be artists. So it it's it does create a pretty unique and amazing opportunity for all of us to work together, because
we know what we're doing. We've been in the industry for years in many departments and many capacities. We've all had 15 hour overnights, you know, like for years straight. You know, we've all kind of experienced that, and now it's a matter of how about we start working on things that we believe in rather than constantly giving our labor over to terrible television, which is basically what we do here. Sorry TV, but don't be paranoid, but that's just
how I feel. But Canada is really good about grants for the arts. It's not as great as it used to be. It used to be much better. I shouldn't say that. You're you are right. There's there is a lot here, but a lot of it does seem to be more eastern focused, like it's in Ontario and Quebec, a lot of it. And you can tell, like, a lot of those I would say that's where some of the best movies in Canada come from. So I don't know if that's a matter of they deserve the grants or the grants are
basically effectively working. You know, like Yeah. Because some of the best stuff comes from there. Out here in BC, we're pretty limited, and it also means the competition is much greater. So it does become pretty difficult to get those grants here in BC, which is why me and my producing partner, we work full time in different departments to pay for our own projects. Yeah. I really wanna work with this team again. I really we've all but I feel this this movie was definitely the one where
I learned how to do my job. Like, I actually finally understood really what my job as a director was. You know, I think before I was kind of a producer director, that's in a way micromanaging. And I recognized that that's not that's not really what I wanna do, but I didn't really know how else to do it. And then I finally learned how to not be a producer, but to just focus and be
a director, and what that actually meant. And so so many lessons came from that, and I really would love to to honor this team that made this movie with me by by bringing them work, and by bringing them something where they're free to be creative, especially my, wardrobe my wardrobe team, led by Tina Tam, she was incredible, and I wanna be able to give her a larger canvas to play. Yeah.
I feel that about mine as well, that regardless of what I do, whether it is an offshoot from the short or something brand new, I wanna work with these people that Mhmm. You know, it was so much fun. I loved it so much, and they were all brilliant at their Mhmm. At their contribution. It's awesome. How lucky are we that we get I know. Do this? And and the and those those people who get to do it full time, like, properly employed doing it, I'm I think that's the
luckiest thing in the world. Luckiest thing. You know? But I'm not not to not to take away from us as as indie artists. Yeah. Like, it's also the best thing in the world. And I I remember after our film was wrapped, because we shot it for 5 days, and when it was wrapped, I remember just thinking, like, I wanna do this every day. Like, this is the job I want. I wanna do this every day for the rest of my life. I wanna direct. I wanna be on set for 12 hours a day as the director because I loved
it. I loved every second of it. Same. Same. Yeah. Yeah. It's it was it was because it it really does fit with so many of the things that I think I've cultivated for myself over the years in terms of the community building, the respect for others, and making space for them, and also just constantly learning how to articulate and express yourself, and also, learning new new approaches to managing your emotional emotions.
You know? Because I I think for the most part, I would see myself as pretty level headed and calm in most of what I do, but yet, every once in a while, I'll surprise myself by being maybe a little, whingey, or, you know, I'm I'm just I'm getting I'm starting to get anxious because of this or that thing, and then I catch myself, I'm like, okay, that's not what you wanna do. So to to kind of put myself in a situation where I'm learning, I suppose, new triggers or what about myself,
I think is also great. It's exciting and it's scary, but I actually think it just adds to, you know, the overall intention, which is to keep growing and keep evolving, but to do that with others. You know? Yeah. I can tell when I see a film. I can tell the directors who truly love story. Who really understand story. And not just the words on the page that the actors are saying, but every single part of it, the lighting, the the location, the clothing The color choices.
The color, the sound, the music, everything, the lack of sound. It's all it's when you see something like that, you, when you leave the theater and just, it almost takes you a mo you know, I mean, I have been at the end of movies and needed some time sitting there before I vacated the seat because of what I just experienced.
You know, that there's nothing like that. And then the communion of being in the theater with people watching, whether it's your own movie or other people's movies, that feeling of, you know, everyone jumping or everyone laughing or just that beautiful, beautiful communion. There is nothing like it. It's so great. I I completely agree. I completely agree. I still insist going to the theater for every horror film, new horror film, because watching a horror with an audience is So
great. So much fun. It's so great. Because whether whether it's the the jokes laughing with people, or or cringing and squirming with people, or it's it's one of the greatest experiences. And I don't, I know that a good comedy or a good action movie or what could deliver that as well, but I find more consistently, horror does it. And, yeah, and and going to these festivals and watching horror with either the filmmakers or just fans of it, it it's always
that's that's my rock concert. That's my my music festival. You know? We're sharing in the same love for the thing. And, yeah, there's nothing like it, truly. You know? I mean, obviously, to everyone else, it's gonna be something different. Going to a music fest for them is the thing. Yeah. Of course. Yeah. Yeah. But, I I I love going to the theater and watching movies with people, and especially especially when it's a movie that does kinda it goads goads the audience into certain reactions.
It's nice to see how well that worked or didn't. Yeah. You know? Oh, totally. Yeah. Absolutely. And it is you know, I come from a songwriting background. Every every word is important in a song and the melody and all that. Everything is so important. It's really interesting as a songwriter to listen to a song now. Any song is to try to not hone in on just the lyric or just the melody, to hear it as a whole.
And now when I'm in the theater, because I'm in this mindset of having made my first movie, I'm like, okay. Just watch the movie as a whole. Don't be like, look at that lighting or look at da da da. I'm trying to see the whole thing. It's hard sometimes. It's so hard. Yeah. I know. I still I still do it. And and it's funny because sometimes it can go both ways, where you're sort of pulled out of the story or the movie because you're noticing these things.
But then there's sometimes it's the movie so good, you can't help but notice those things. Right. You know? And it's just like, you know, sometimes if I'm at home, I'll pause it just to take a breath and be like, did you did you see how well that was blocked? You know? Did you notice what the actors did in that? That was incredible. Yeah. These little magical things that that are done that for the most part, I think people
just take it in. Maybe they don't notice, but it's it's so lovely to see those choices being made. Mhmm. It makes me feel very cared for and loved as a con as a consumer of the of the art form. That's a good way to put that. Yeah. I agree with you. I I agree with
you. Like, I can I always feel that as well that I I do feel that when we buy the ticket, we are we are ultimately, putting our faith in, you know, a a good ringmaster of some kind that understands there's an audience there and this is for them or whatever? And when you there's some filmmakers right away, you can feel you trust them and you feel like I'm they I whatever they do, I'm in. Whatever they do, I'm in. Even if it even if it hurts.
But whereas there's sometimes you can feel it, and you're like, yeah, you you don't you're not caring about the audience at all. You're trying to show off something else, and that doesn't feel doesn't feel sincere. You know? I think that's the one thing I can always tell in a film or a book as well, the sincerity of of the the artist where you can be like, I get what you were doing here, but you weren't doing it for the right reasons. You know? You don't you're not
actually exploring this because it means something. You're exploring it because you think it has shock value, and that's it. Or something. Right? You're not it doesn't work for me. Right. It's funny how we feel that stuff on a real deep level.
Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. And and it and it doesn't matter if it's budget, because I've seen indie features or indie shorts that are, production wise, terrible, You know, they weren't made by people who have figured out the tools yet, but the heart was so clear. The sincerity was perfect. And then there's movies that are big budget or mid range budget, and immediately, you can be like, yeah. This
is so insincere. I'm out. I'm out because you're you have no respect for your characters, the story, or me. I'm out. You know? And you can feel it. I think you can feel it instantly. Sometimes things have bumpy starts. Like, sometimes they're you have to you have to watch for that 30 minute mark or something because sometimes people Find their way. Yeah. They find their way. And I can testify that I'm the same. My my opening scenes, I think, are maybe a touch longer than
they need to be. You know? I do notice that. I'm like, yeah. Because I remember I had this intention of coming into it slowly, but that's too slowly. You know? But I have to live with it, and Yeah. It really is a dance. All of that. Yeah. Yeah. Janet Yeah. Planet. Talk about a slow I'm gonna write this down. It's really quite lovely. It's a slow build, but I really loved
it. And I as I was watching it, I thought so many people are gonna turn this off because they their attention span won't be able to handle the the the the length of time it takes, but it was with such care. And to me, the the time it took to get to things was, from my perspective, perfectly telling the narrator. It's really told from the perspective of the little girl. And for little kids, time feels extraordinarily
long. So I just thought, well, what a lovely thing that the director realized and and really put us in the world of this small child navigating this world and everything is is takes forever. Like, everything is a draw, you know, a slow climb to whatever is coming next, you know. I really dug it. I actually really like slow paced films. I actually am one of those people who love slow burns, you know, the meditative sort of film. I love that a lot. But we have to
remember the reason why stories are made. Right? They are escapism. They are, you know, they are a place for us to let go. And I think our world now is so fast paced and our attention span is so short that if we can embrace the gift of the 2 hours or 3:3 hours is a long time for to get people to sit, but sometimes it's really worth it. Or just to sit and read or whatever. The the the gift of that is so extraordinary in a world that doesn't want us to slow down even for a second.
Did you did you happen to see, Drive My Car? It was, I think I think it's an Apple TV movie, or at least they acquired it. I'm trying to remember the director. It's a Japanese film. Slow. Like, I think for people who can't take a slow movie, it's slow. But it's so beautiful. Like, for me, the length of every scene felt correct. Like, it just I always felt like almost right as you're starting to feel like, okay, I got I got what I needed, It would cut cut to a new scene. You're
like, okay. Good. Like, I feel like I'm I'm I'm in the rhythm with this film. That's a really good way to put it. That's such a good way to put it. Getting into the rhythm of the film. Right. Perfect example. Yeah. And I I love that sort of thing. The Drive My Car is not a horror at all. It's the human drama and but it's so beautiful. It is very beautiful film, but also its pace is, again, like, to some, it would be slow, but to me, it was it was perfect. I just Yeah. I'll take it out.
Yeah. Do. I think that I think that same filmmaker, he did a movie a couple of years before called The Burning. Maybe it's not Japanese. Maybe it's Korean now that I think about it because I think The Burning is Japan is Korean. But he did a movie a couple of years ago, The Burning with Steven Yeun. And same thing, like, it's it's a really the reason I bring that one up is because that one's a little more potentially on the thriller side. It's not it's not really, but it definitely has that,
aspect. And the same thing, he brings this nice, slow, meditative pace to it. Almost like a Henneke movie or something, like, and I and again, I just love that. I like Korean noir a lot. Oh, man. I don't know I don't know what's going on over there, but they're killing it with their movie.
So they're so good. So good. I don't I honestly don't you know, every once in a while, like, every generation of filmmakers, there is a moment where you're like, oh, in that 5 year win window, these movies from Austin, Texas or something, they were they were just the best. Or these these past 5 years, it's all been from Mexico or something. And it just seems for the last, like, 10 or 15 years, Koreans have been
making just Killing it. Yeah. Like, I I almost I can't turn down a Korean film if it's if it's suggested because I've not seen one that I'm not impressed with. Yeah. I feel the same way. Yeah. Yeah. Killing it. Shane, you're delightful.
Oh, thank you. You too, Susan. I'm I'm really glad you asked me to do this, because, yeah, we had a really nice rapport, obviously, when we met at nightmares in Columbus, and so I'm really I'm really touched that you asked me to to carry on our conversation, and then in this capacity, so it feels good. Totally my pleasure. Absolutely. Tell people how they can find you so they can keep track of your your movies
and things. I am I'm a very poor social media person, but I am getting better at Instagram, and I have been posting through my company, Skinner Street Films, as well as my own handle, Shane Peter Day. And skinnerstreetfilms.com is where you could also find me and contact me, have a look at some of my other projects and projects that I've produced, or, and then in the works and whatnot. And yeah, I'm happy for people to reach out.
I want I've always talked film and literature with people, and anyone who's interested in story shopping. That's one thing that I absolutely stand behind as something for myself is that I'm very I'm a very good story consultant. I love rapping on story. I love, like, instantly, like, any topic you wanna play with, we can find an avenue for it. We can figure out where the story is gonna go, and I and I love doing that. That's my one of my
greatest joys. And I'll put your information on Hey Human Podcast website on the links page too, so it's easy to find if for whatever reason they need to go look in one place. So I'll do that too. Thank you, Susan. And please keep in touch. I will. It was wonderful. Thank you. And thank you for listening everybody. Bye. Rate, review, and subscribe to Hey Human Podcast on Apple Iheart or Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. Thanks. Bye.