Hey, it's David Weiner, writer, director, producer of the In Search of Darkness trilogy and the upcoming In Search of Darkness 90s and In Search of Tomorrow, and a guy who's constantly on eBay trying to reclaim his childhood one toy at a time. And you are listening to the Oblivion Bar. to the Oblivion Bar podcast with your host, Chris Hacker and Aaron Knowles. Welcome back to the Oblivion Bar podcast.
It is I, Aaron Knowles, and I am here to interview and welcome back a really amazing guy and just great friend of the show. Joining us on this episode is the acclaimed documentary filmmaker of In Search of Darkness, part one, two, and three, In Search of Tomorrow, which are both extended deep dive explorations of 1980s horror and action sci-fi through the lens of the actors, directors, and crew that worked on those iconic films.
But also coming back after our recent conversation, I believe back in February, talking about his new and just amazing step into the 90s with In Search of Darkness, 1990 to 1994, or just 90 to 94. It is my honor, my distinct honor, to welcome back David Weiner to the Oblivion Bar podcast. I am here. And you pronounced my name correctly. I love to hear that. Wonderful intro. Thank you. We joke. because that's how it all started, right?
Yeah, it's a pleasure to be back and a pleasure to see you, Aaron. And happy to talk all about my my new step into a larger world of a new decade. I am excited as well. We have a bit to cover because there has been, you know, we've we've done a lot of discussions with you on the 80s, which, you know, Chris and I have talked about ad nauseam about we're just 80s babies. We love everything 80s. But the 90s for us, you're hitting our sweet spot.
You know, you're hitting the early 90s, which, you know, more than likely, Chris and I were not supposed to be awake watching these horror films. We're not supposed to be, you know, sneaking into these movie theaters. And so we're just, you know, we're, I see the smile on your face right now. I'm excited to talk 90s with you. Absolutely. Yeah. I mean, this is an era where there was a very, very, very, very loud. called arms for us to move into the 90s after we did three movies in the 80s.
And it was a question of what should we do next? Should we do more 80s? Should we go back to the 70s? Should we go into the 2000s? What exactly should we do with the In Search of Darkness films? And it was a cacophony. So many people were really, really excited about the 90s. And the 90s is really interesting because it's more of a challenging. time period coming out of the 80s, which was just a shining beacon of golden goodness when it came to horror.
Everyone had so many amazing icons, know, Freddie and Jason and Pinhead and Michael Myers, you know, really becoming, of course, after 1978, a real big thing. But in the early 90s, filmmakers were trying to sort of expand their repertoire, go in different directions, reflect a grittier landscape sociopolitically, while others were like more sequels, more Freddie, more Chuckie, you know, more Tollman. So there's a lot going on.
And that's all sort of collides with the advent of CGI, which really exploded, especially when people saw Jurassic Park and and Terminator 2, they said, I want that. So it's a really interesting decade to deconstruct and revisit and remind yourself that there was so much cool stuff that you probably forgot was even there. Absolutely. Even just watching the trailer again, because I've watched the trailer multiple times. I love seeing who's going to be in this iteration of In Search of Darkness.
I love seeing the happiness on their faces, the shock, the awe, the trailers that you've included. I'm just so excited to see everything that gets included into this. And I kind of want to touch back on a couple of things that you've just said. And you talked about how, you know, entering the nineties, there was this desire to kind of expand the universes and kind of create new characters. But also it felt like there was also a lot, especially early nineties.
It seemed to be sequels almost every year coming out. So it was not only the expansion into new universes, but the expansion of already existing ones. I think a big element of that is people, filmmakers, producers, studios, all seeing the success of if you create a horror villain or character that people really connect to, you can go sequel after sequel after sequel and... You don't have to spend a lot of money on these sequels and the return on your investment is usually pretty positive.
Even if you spend a little more on a sequel, you'll still make enough money to warrant more sequels. And so I think there were lots of producers and filmmakers and writers who also said to them, you know, to themselves, I want to create someone for myself. I want a franchise. want, know, Chuckie's cool. Chuckie's is diminutive. You know, frightening character, but he's kind of funny too, and he's full of one liners. I don't know.
Gosh. You know, here I am sitting in front of my Lucky Charms cereal just trying to figure out what kind of character I could come up with that would be kind of like that. Well, know, Leprechaun, that's what we get. And Candyman, of course, is a brand new character that's introduced Pennywise, although didn't become a big franchise.
Pennywise in Stephen King's It in 1990, I think was really quite a major character that sort of set the stage of a whole new decade, especially when you took a thousand page book and you were able to successfully translate it to television, not even the movie theater. So there's lots to talk about. I mean, I can keep on going, but you asked the questions. It's just I end up being like a listicle of all the cool stuff that happened in the 90s. No, you are absolutely fine.
Like we're, you know, we got, we brought you onto the show to hear you talk, especially about in search of darkness. But I feel like I'm getting ahead of myself because I want to kind of delve back into like previous conversations and why we've brought you into the past and kind of give people a, a, a peek into, you know, what you've done in the past and why it's kind of motivated you to go into the future.
Like, you know, we've talked about how, you know, we said in your, in your intro in the introduction, excuse me. In Search of Darkness, part one, two and three, and then In Search of Tomorrow.
What, you know, much like obviously entering the 90s, but what prompted, you you starting off these projects and really, again, doing these deep dives and I'm not saying this in a negative fashion at all, but these are like, you know, four to five hour documentaries that goes really deep and really involved, which is amazing because I don't... Nothing like this has ever been created. Nothing like this has really ever been done to this depth. Tell us the motivation behind it.
Well, there's lots to unpack with that, Ken. I want to give you a very specific answer, but it takes some time. But ultimately, no one had done the 80s so thoroughly before. All the films, know, many, many horror documentaries came before us. Absolutely. But most of them were kind of the history of horror or... or more specific, you know, about slashers or about, you know, just certain very specific things, know, like Crystal Lake Memories was a very long film.
You know, I think it was six hours plus on the Friday the 13th franchise. Never Sleep Again, that was, I think, five hours about the Nightmare on Elm Street series. Those two films, at least in terms of length and running time. Those really kind of paved the way and gave permission for me to make a long ass documentary. That and Ken Burns, perhaps.
But there really wasn't in Robin Block, the CEO, creator, VC, he came up with this idea and he just said, how cool would it be if we focus in just on the 80s because it was just such an amazing, insane era of creative and wonderful filmmaking when it came to horror. And when he brought me on board, I fleshed it out and he wanted to do year by year, movie by movie. And that's what we ultimately do. I offered up that I said, we really need larger context with a lot of this stuff as well.
Let's put some chapters in between each year. Let's see how we can cover as much as we can, even though there are there's literally hundreds and hundreds, if not over a thousand plus in the 80s alone. of films, whether they're studio films or shot on video, you know, straight to video films. But I think this was a little more manageable. And what we found was that people really responded to this format. And, you know, it goes long because the format demands it.
And you still ironically don't get to fit in all the films you ironically. don't get to put in as much information as you want to or even have from interviews because you just kind of have to keep the train keeps on moving along and you got to keep up with it. And if you miss it, the train is going to leave without you because we're going on to the next movie, the next chapter, the next year. And we have a decade to cross.
then if we're not going to do it in four and a half hours and then we upped it to five and then we kind of upped it to about five hours, 15 minutes and then. Robin said, please, no more, please, not so long. And fan said, please, more, I could watch this for 24 seven. And I'll just cut to the chase that the newest In Search of Darkness now that we're in the 90s, we divided into two parts. So we're not doing the whole decade anymore. We're doing, as you said, 1990 to 1994.
By the way, pretty unwieldy title, right? In Search of Darkness, 1992, 1994. It's a real mouthful when you want to save the title. But of course, what comes after that, you know, In Search of Darkness 1995 to 1999. And that's in the works and we'll do that in a year. Ideally, I'll be talking to you again all about it. But I'm pleased to say that I kind of got my way because the format got its way and because I added some television, I added more obscure films.
It's now a movie when you include the credits, it's almost six. hours. I'll show myself out now. And again, I want to make sure that nothing is taken out of context here. I love the fact that this is so in depth and it has the length that it does because there's too many documentaries.
There's too many things that, know, that I've watched, especially when it goes into the horror film industry, which, you know, Chris and I recently were talking about about how our love and I don't know if it's, you know, thinking about it now, you might be the, the, the pure motivational factor behind it, but Chris and I over the last couple of years, have very much increased in our love of the horror genre.
And I say all this because we love what you're doing and we love, you know, the In Search of Darkness, you know, franchise because of, you know, what it gives to us. And again, there are so many different creators. There's so many different actors that you get to see. And again, I tell people, I tell people go watch the trailer because you'll be blown away by how many people are just in the trailer alone. and you're going to see some amazing stuff.
But one thing I want to kind of jump back again a little bit in time is when we last spoke, tell us where you because we were I think it was February is the last time we spoke. Where were you in the process of, you know, creating 90 to 94? And where are you now? Yeah, I think when we were in February of this year, I was most definitely in the middle of production. I was doing lots of interviews. I had to wait for a little while because of the Screen Actors Guild strike.
There was a writers strike the previous summer. So a summer ago, in summer of 2023, into, I can't remember when it ended, but it's a bit of a blur now. But we ultimately waited a little bit because in solidarity with the actors and the writers and the guilds, we really wanted to not do any interviews whatsoever.
And so I was playing catch-up and also trying to manage lots of people's schedules because a lot of actors, since they weren't working, a lot of directors, a lot of craftspersons, now all of a sudden they were super busy because work was picking up for them as well. So in February, I was navigating basically lots of interviews. The film, what I was gonna be talking about was established, it was outlined, my questions were written.
I was in the process of doing interviews and doing outreach for more interviews. And that's quite a process. And sometimes it takes longer than other times. You know, it's got its challenges. A lot of times it's nice to have some familiar faces come back and talk about they talked about their 80s work in the trilogy. And now they're back talking about their 90s work. And that's super cool. You know, names like, you know, Heather Langenkamp, Alex Winter, know, Mick Garris.
Doug Bradley, it's very cool to have these guys come back. Even David Desmouchian came back. Very, very cool. But I wanted to load this up with 90s faces, 90s stars, some new talking heads of who are experts, like very, very fortunate to have like Mike Flanagan, director Mike Flanagan, who, know, Dr. Sleep, he's a Stephen King expert with all the films that he makes and adapts. and his miniseries and so on and so forth. But he is a 90s nut.
He grew up in that era and he was so excited and knowledgeable to share his perspective talking about that. And another name that leaps to mind was Kayla Cooper, the screenwriter of Megan and Malignant and the one two. She's written a bunch of things. She's got more projects coming this way. I think she's got Megan to the summer and a bunch of other things. Anyway, know, gosh, it was so cool. I reached out to her. I got an email back right away. Hells yeah. When are we going to sit down?
You know, getting for her getting to talk about her, her upbringing, you know, with the I'm not allowed to watch horror, but I finally got to see this and now I regret it. And now I'm obsessed with horror because of it type of upbringing that so much of us had. She's she's, you know. front and center with that kind of stuff and was very, very excited to talk about it.
all I could say is, I am very, very lucky that when we get these people, their enthusiasm is infectious and they sit for a long time and they really devote their time and their effort and their enthusiasm and it really makes for a lively conversation about a little more complicated time. So to ultimately answer your question, that's where I was in February. Now the movie is done, 99 % done. We're doing polish right now. I'm laying in the music, we're doing the sound mix.
We still have yet to do the end credits because what we do is, and we'll talk about this later, but the only way to get this movie is go to 90shorror.com and it's a pre-order. And when the movie is complete complete, you'll get it as a digital. release first at the end of November. Then we make, manufacture, and distribute the Blu-rays so everyone can have it in their hands and have their names in the credits. And that's what's so cool about it is that you guys get your name in credits.
You can put your podcast, Oblivion bar, if you so desire. But you can put anything you want in the end credits and be a part of horror history and get it pushed over the line so everyone can get it and... That's where we are. We're practically done. So I'm here telling everyone that the last day of our campaign for preorder is it's now Sunday, November 3rd. You have through the weekend after Halloween to get it.
And then you're not going to be able to get it for a while because and you're definitely not going to get your name in the credits because I got to finish it up and get it out there to everybody. And we will be blasting that out everywhere. especially tomorrow. So today is the 28th. This episode should be out on the 29th of October, right on time for Halloween. So you guys can get a little, spooky motivation to get your name in those credits.
We'll be posting the links wherever, you know, we can, but let's continue with this interview because we have a lot to discuss. I, and thing that I love that you shared is the enthusiasm of these, you know, actors, these creators, these craftsmen, these directors, writers, everybody. It's, that's what I have come to love about the creative community, whether it's in comics or movies or shows is the simple fact that it is every single aspect of this is a labor of love.
And it's also interesting how that love transcends like just time and the decade and it bridges all these different people. Like, you you're talking about these directors and these writers now who are coming out with these films and these horror films and their love of the industry from the 80s, from the 70s has all motivated them. I can't even imagine the feeling that you must get when you get to talk to these people. you said, it's infectious, right? It's fun. It's fun.
mean, there's sort of three elements of me, of David Weiner. There's the guy who is struggling to get someone to say, yes, I'm interested. Then when they say, yes, sure, sounds great, when, or hells yeah, and I'm like, yes, score, so excited, and we get them, we sit down exclusively with them. Ideally, we get more than an hour. Usually these interviews are 90 minutes, two hours. Sometimes they even go two and a half to three hours. And these guys are very, very generous with their time.
So there's the fan boy who says, yes, I got someone. You know, it's like it's like any pots and Ghostbusters. We got one. You know, I hit the alarm bell and then there's the I'm a professional. I'm here to, you know, do an interview and to make you relaxed and to show you that we love you. We're I'm knowledgeable. Your audience loves everything you're talking about and is interested. So please tell us as much as you can.
And then there's the fanboy again, who as soon as like they leave and say thanks a lot, you know, if they add like, hey, if there's anything I could do to help promote, I'm like, cool, psych. They weren't very happy to be here. And then the fanboy again gets like, I just can't believe that just happened. You know, I can only sandwich the media review. Totally understand.
And what blows my mind thinking about that is when you say, especially if it's two, 90 minutes to two hours is, is it must be so hard to leave some of that conversation on the cutting room floor, you know? it's brutal. There's so much good stuff. But a big part of making these movies is structure and flow and necessity and relevance and repetition or lack thereof. So when I, you know, I write these as well and people say, well, how do you write a documentary?
But in addition to, course, you outline it, you write the questions, that's a writing element where you're really creating the structure of what you want. But then once you do the interview and you go down all sorts of rabbit holes and tangents and you get all these amazing, you know, the flow of conversation, you know, I can't believe you, no one's ever asked me that question or, I just remember something that I haven't thought of in the longest time.
And they go and tell a whole tale, you know. But at the end, what I now have to do is I have to take these unwieldy long interviews and I need to structure it in a film that is essentially a story of a decade or a half decade. It has to make sense. It has to be coherent. I want these people who have conflicting opinions to both have their say while it still remains a celebration and not a cynical take on things.
And what I have to do is I take all these bites And I layer them and I literally I script this with the bytes from top to bottom for ultimately a five and a half or five and a half and change movie, you know, and then credits after that. And that is quite the feat. And there are times when you have really great stuff in there that it just throws off the flow. It throws off the chi, you know, the feng shui of the whole operation.
And you even though it's really good stuff, sometimes it doesn't quite fit. And sometimes, know, want it's nice to have and it's important to have an emotional moment and talking about challenges and failures and disappointments. You know, that's that story is interesting and compelling and we want that. But this is not also, you know, a tell all tale. You know, this is a tale about how these movies fit in the the jigsaw puzzle of a decade.
And there are times when there's just like a great little anecdote and just like, the anecdotes too long. can I compress it and still get the vibrant nature of what they're trying to say in the context and it's all there and it's still fun and we're as funny as I found it when they told me. But sometimes it just does not fit, you know? And it's painful, but sometimes people get to see this stuff down the road. So I don't feel like it's lost completely.
There's like this part of the conversation, it just makes me like both envious and completely whatever the opposite of envious is because like I just I can't imagine that that's that's just a a laborious process that but it's also just again a heartbreaking but but beautiful process and you know again trying to keep a story intact while still kind of like consolidating it it's such a challenge I especially like I I can't even imagine but
at the same time I have a little bit of a relation to it because of writing but at the same time I don't think that I have the ability to comprehend the depth of it. Because, yeah, it's such an interesting way to look at it. it's an interesting element of it is, you know, what I love about these In Search of Darkness documentaries is that you get people talking about their own films, whether they were in front of the camera or behind the camera.
But you also have them talking about their favorites. And so ultimately, you know, you might get to whatever title it may be. You know, you get to say, we get to Army of Darkness and I'm talking with Ted Raimi about his experience on there. But I also, because I was talking to Alex Winter, Alex Winter was friends with Sam Raimi and would go to the set and be in awe and just watch as a fan and as a student of film. And so I'd get his perspective on things. also, know, Kayla Cooper is a huge fan.
So I get her, you know, just appreciation of the film. But I also was talking to Bernard Rose, the director of Candyman. He's like, I had a one line in Army of Darkness. got to play a soldier and it was the time of my life. And he's a pretty serious guy. And he's just like, I love that movie so much. And so it's an embarrassment of riches when I assemble a piece together and I'm just like, these are elements you don't get anywhere else. I mean, more on Alex Winter.
It's like, he was also a fly on the wall for Bram Stoker's Dracula because Keanu Reeves is his buddy. Keanu's like, come to this, the Dracula set today. He's like, all right. So he's hanging out with Coppola and Keanu and everybody else and just in awe at the amazing filmmaking.
so I get to have his perspective on that, as well as, say, James V. Hart, who who wrote the screenplay and was a producer and and got to be, you know, he's the guy that Coppola wouldn't have made it if it wasn't for him and for Winona Ryder, because Winona Ryder. felt, I'm going down the rabbit hole already. You're fine. We know a writer already felt guilty that she bowed out of Godfather III for quote unquote exhaustion, whatever that meant to her. It was too much.
But she felt some, she felt contrite and she wanted to make it up to Francis Ford Coppola in some way, or form. And she came across James V. Hart, Jim Hart's... script for Bram Stoker's Dracula, which at the time it was going and making the rounds, it was going to be like a TV movie. And somehow it landed in her pile. She went through it, saw it, said, huh, I think Francis might like this, brought it to Francis as sort of a sorry, I didn't make it. I like the script. What do you think?
And he's like, I love that book. I love. Let me read the script. it's great. Next thing you know, you know, this guy who is a a screenwriter, of course, James V. Hart, who hadn't could not like, you know, catch a cold in Hollywood and his representation. He also had another script at the same time that started getting traction called Hook. Next thing he knew, Hook and Bram Stoke is Dracula are being made at the same time. They're both at Sony Studios, Columbia at the time.
And You know, he's just like, I owned that studio, you know, all the the golf carts going around. either said Bram Stoker's Dracula or Hook. And one day there was there was a crash of two carts. One was Hook. One was Dracula. What a crossover. It's pretty fun. when you know, what was the question? The question really was about writing this thing. But to me, yes, it's very difficult, but I've done this many times and I'm not saying it's easy, but.
when it comes together nicely, because you have all these disparate elements and you're able to sort of fit them in the puzzle. I'm saying puzzle a lot. It is, you know, you put the puzzle together and it starts fitting together nicely. You could progressively tell a great story of production and behind the scenes. And when it comes together with amazing clips, you're it's awesome. It's wonderful.
Such an amazing explanation of how this all works together, how Hollywood is this churning mixing cauldron of just constant ideas in and out, whether it's at the same time from the same person or many different people. It's that's such a, it's such a, a beautiful yet chaotic way of kind of explaining what holiday, how, how, what Hollywood is. And I love it.
I want to ask about kind of the transition from the eighties and the nineties and speaking to these, these, people that are in, in the documentary. and, and What did speaking to these horror icons of both the 80s and the 90s reveal about the genre, industry itself, and what feelings do they convey to you about the changes from the 80s to the 90s? Well, think it's always important.
I think everyone knows, if you really do think about it, that the last day of 1989 and the first day of 1990, there is no difference at all. We define it as an entirely new decade. You know, the ball drops, everyone says Happy New Year, and all of a sudden everything is different. But of course, it's not, you know, the change is progressive. So all these folks who came to talk about their work and their career, some were just getting warmed up.
Others were trying to figure out, like say John Carpenter, you know, what's my next act? You what do I do next? How do I keep things going and start doing things that I'm interested in versus someone say like, you know, Wes Craven, for example, he's like, you know, I'm he's cooking on all the metaphors. He's like on also firing on all cylinders and, you know, really interested in in in meta filmmaking before we had that word meta, you know. So he's doing the people under the stairs.
He's doing he's reinventing. Freddy Krueger with Wes Craven's New Nightmare, where he's literally taking a horror icon and a franchise that really was top of its game and really defines for so many people what 80s horror was. And he said, I'm just going to pick this apart. I'm going to have the actors, including myself, play ourselves in, you know, Heather Langham plays Heather Langham, Robert Englund plays Robert Englund. They play a version of themselves.
that in real life and Freddy is getting into their world in real life. You know, and that's kind of a hard sell. It might even be a hard sell today. It sure certainly was a hard sell for Heather Langley can who was who was then a new mom and playing a mom in this in this movie and just thinking, is this something I really want to do? You know, my husband, who is a special effects guy in the movie. My husband's a special effects guy. You know, she's like, this is hitting way too close to home.
I don't think I want to do this. But without getting too much into that movie, we can later, if you like. but, you know, she decided no way am I going to let anyone else play Nancy. That's my role. I get to play that role over the course of many years. So I get to evolve with that role, which is very special and interesting and rare for an actor. But you have a lot of evolution with filmmakers trying to figure out what they want to do.
Kronenberg, he's like, I'm going to get a little weirder, but I'm also going to go further away from this. know, Ramey, he's like, I'll do Darkman. I'll do Army of Darkness. But now I'm going to I'm going to pivot and do a Western. I'll do the quick and the dead. You know, I'll do a simple plan. I'll do for the love of the game, you know, about baseball. He, you know, and of course, we all know that he moved on to Spider-Man after that. you know, there was a, and he did the gift as well.
So we went back to horror for a little bit, but chronologically, ultimately he was trying to show his chops as a filmmaker that it would be a versatile filmmaker. Cause listen, none of these people only wanted to do horror. Yeah. You know, they're, they're masters of horror. Is that all they ever wanted to do? No, not even Wes Craven. Cause what did he do? He used his clout.
to make a movie called Music of the Heart with Meryl Streep based on a true story about a teacher and kids teaching a music teacher. anyway, the 90s when it became January 1990, it was the beginning of filmmakers collectively, not all of them. Some were just like, I want my hamburger and cheeseburger and sequel always be the same with another. you know, this, that, or the other sequel. That's a sure thing.
But I think a lot of filmmakers were recognizing that audiences were hungry for something new, hungry for something a little more intelligent, something that respected them a little more or challenged them a little more. Actors were looking for challenging material. Directors were looking to push the envelope with technology and practical effects. But you also got a whole... I mean, this has been the longest answer in the world, right? You've also got studios that still see horror as a stigma.
they're more interested in putting out, they'll put out horror films, but they are much more interested in spending the big marketing money on something that they could call a thriller, especially when they see something like Fatal Attraction does really well. Everyone wants their Fatal Attraction with Single Life Female or Hannah Rocks the Cradle or Sleeping with the Enemy or Basic Instinct and so So, you know, something like that. But then you get a movie like, you know, is it a thriller?
Is it horror? Doesn't matter. It's called Silence of the Lambs and it went on. Yeah. And you get a whole serial killer subgenre and everyone wants to be like that. And you get all the a-listers who say, I want my Oscar for chewing up the scenery like Tony Hopkins. So you get movies, especially in the wake of ramp circus Dracula, like with the vampire. You get Wolf, you get Mary Shelley's. Frankenstein and so on. All right, I'll stop there. No, you're good.
I love because one thing I did before, you know, earlier today when I was getting ready for this conversation was I went through each of the years that you covered and I went through and I basically made a list of each year of my favorite horror movies and I can bring those up later and kind of pick your brain on some of those. But it's funny because like I just I hear you mention these movies and it's like, yep. That's one, that's one, that's one.
And I love, and I do, I didn't realize, again, as I mentioned earlier, how Chris and I are kind of very much accepting this love of horror that wasn't necessarily as big when we first started the show, but it's definitely big now. And realizing that maybe this love of horror was actually there because of how many of these movies I actually do love and enjoy.
Just because of maybe, again, the alignment of, the 90s starting and that's really where I started kind of growing up into my own and watching these films. But saying that, I want to kind of bring this together with one of the topics that you just talked about.
And one thing that we kind of discussed and is brought up in your trailer as well is the explosion of digital effects into just Hollywood in general, but the impact that it had on horror and thriller and this, you know, and, cinema and Hollywood itself. And you kind of already touched on it a little bit, but, I don't want you to give too much away because obviously a lot of it goes into the documentary. We don't want to spot, we want people to go watch it, not spoil it.
But I just, want to hear your, your, your words on the introduction of this new wave of like technology and it kind of hitting almost all the toolkits of, of know, everyone except for, you know, really the practical effect loyalists, you know, and how it kind of affected the industry. Well, it was cool to have Robert Kurtzman in our cast. He would later be the director of Wishmaster. And, you know, he came up with the idea for From Dusk Till Dawn.
But he was part of KNB Special Effects doing every huge movie, working with Howard Berger and Greg Nicotero, they were working on every movie. he was like a wealth of information where I'm just like, all right, tell me about Leatherface, tell me about Misery, tell me about that. He was there for all of it, practically. But one of the first things he said was he said some interesting things. He said that as soon I'm sort of jumping forward and then I'll go backwards.
Once the big explosion happened and all of a sudden there was this pivot in the industry where everyone said, I want something like Jurassic Park and T2. More and more producers were saying it's going to be CG or we'll fix it in post. so practical effects, were if the the crews weren't getting smaller or the budgets weren't getting smaller, they were getting less prep time because they figured they could do more with CG.
And so it really was affecting the practical effects purists and the way they were doing business and their creativity and what they could produce on whatever budget they were given. It was a definite cause and effect that happened immediately. It had ripple effects throughout the entire entertainment industry.
But I think now stepping back a little bit, what's interesting about that whole decade of the 90s, I think a lot of people when they think about the 90s, one of the things they think about is, really bad CGI. You know, CG doesn't doesn't it looks terrible. You know, it's lawnmower man effects. And what they don't realize is or they don't immediately think of unless you see a movie like In Search of Darkness, 1990 to 1994 is a recontextualization of why, you know, this was brand new at the time.
You know, it was it was also a technology that was in its infancy. all of sudden taking baby steps and then just burst out of the gate like a toddler who could walk and running around like a maniac. And that was essentially with Jurassic Park and Terminator 2, as I've mentioned. All these producers and filmmakers said, I want that, but I don't want to pay the money that's required. So maybe like one fifth of the budget that IOM or Industrial Light Magic or.
Stan Winston and those guys take extreme amount of time with huge teams, lots of R &D to make these effects look real. know, also people looked at these dinosaurs and said, holy crap, it's all digital and they look so real. Not understanding that there's a digital divide where practical effects and digital effects begin. And they don't know where that seam is because you have a... master filmmaker, James Cameron, Steven Spielberg, hiding these seems like expert magicians.
So you just think, it's digital. Everything's digital now. I want that, too. And then you're wondering why it's not as good because you can't spend the money to get it right or the time to get it right. And in defense of, say, the lawnmower man, know, lawnmower man's problems. really are about the fact that it's based on a Stephen King story and has next to nothing to do with that original story.
That's apples and oranges though, because we're talking about the effects and the effects are about virtual reality and advances in technology. If you look at virtual reality at the time, this was the cutting edge look. Yes, exactly. It looked just like this. When you're talking about morphing. Morphing was brand new. We first saw it actually in Michael Jackson's Black or White video. And then next thing you know, Mick Garris is using it in sleepwalkers and the stand.
And all of a sudden, everyone wants a piece of that and they want to have morphing. And it looks super cool. To audiences at the time, they were like, wow, really neat. Never saw this before. How cool. How did they do that? But it quickly ages. And all I can say is that you have to recognize that at the time, It felt very real, very new. Your jaw dropped. You look back at Ray Harryhausen's stop motion effects. No one says, those look so fake.
They know that it's a time capsule stop motion effect of the era. know, also Brian's King Kong. You don't say, my God, it looks so fake. No, everyone at the time when they saw that, they suspended their disbelief and they were in awe. at how they were transported to a magical landscape with creatures and battles with these skeletons and... Clash the titans and...
To this day, we love it, but we know that it's not realistic, but you accept it for what it is because you have the context of what it is. And all I will say is that, you know, we still haven't even to this day, with all the amazing advances where... There's more practical effects used and then there's visual CG to sweeten things. So the effects really look good more often than not. Sometimes they're still kind of bad. We still haven't fully crossed the uncanny valley.
know, things look very real, but we still know if it's human or not. We just know it, you know? And, you know, there's all sorts of questions about what we're doing now, resurrecting. dead actors to star in, you know, contemporary films, you name it. It's in a commercial. It's on television. It's in on video. I your movies. But lastly, I'll just say, you know, 30 years from now, we'll look at Avatar and say, my God, those are like stick figures. Really?
People people paid a billion dollars to see that. You know, that's it's like a big cartoon. You know, I could do better on my iPhone with that. And they will be and they'll be right. But It doesn't matter because it was cool when it was new. Exactly. I always I always kind of attribute that to my my thoughts of the original Tron and then the evolution of like Tron legacy.
You know, if you look back at Tron and you look at the computer like Tron was not allowed to win any I think it was any Emmys or was it any kind of Oscars? That's what I say. It wasn't allowed to win an Oscar because they you know, people said they were cheating. You know, and look at the industry now. So it's like, always tell people like, if you enjoy things like Tron legacy, go back and watch where it came from. Like that's the evolution.
know, you can't exactly what you said with lawnmower man. You know, if you were, if anybody was a gamer back in the day, and I always throw my own kind of like, you know, to relate it to people back in the, I to say early nineties, the Nintendo, they released the virtual boy and that was virtual reality. And it was just, all it was, was grid effects. It was red and black. grid effects and it was terrible. But that's what you saw and you appreciated it and you loved it.
You have to appreciate the moments that we have in time and appreciate and that's what you're doing is you're taking these moments, these years that we have and you're showing why they should be appreciated from behind the scenes to in front of the screens. And it does not matter. the viewers feelings on, on what it looked like back then, because what it looked like back then was mind blowing or it was beautiful or anything.
like, I, I love the fact that you have this perspective and hopefully this perspective continues to, you know, catch on. then saying all that, like, I just want to remind people again, that we're coming up last minute for people to jump in on this incredible journey into the depths of, of early nineties, horror. You'll be able to get it later on, just like, David said, you'll be able to get it later on.
if you really want to support it now, if you really want to be in those credits, if you really want to be a part of this this journey, you know, jump on it. But I want to give you, David, before we close out this conversation, I want to give you just some some time. What would you say to them like directly, you know, to entice them to be a part of this yet again, a historical documentary? Yeah, I think for those who aren't in the know or haven't seen these movies.
These are, we're a small company. Creator VC is the company that makes these. It's essentially our blood, sweat and tears as a very small team goes into making these very long form documentaries. We really put our heart and soul in these things.
And if you want to support independent filmmaking, that's not governed by a studio or a marketing team for some sort of What have you, you know, a marketing team saying we've got this new product on the line and so we'll do a, you know, a documentary to support the product. This is really about a time in film history that we are fans of and that we appreciate.
And I'm making this for fans of film, for fans of horror and for fans of the 90s who might not know that they're fans of the 90s because I'm not, I'm not. misled or deceived about people's perception of the 90s. know, coming after the 80s, it's a little more complicated time. And I think a lot of people, when they look at that decade, the first thing they think of is, well, there was Scream, know, Blair Witch, and maybe Silence of the Lambs, if you want to count that.
But then they kind of scratch their head. So here's an opportunity to have your memory refreshed with an absolute celebration of this era. all about it, all about filmmaking. You don't even necessarily have to be a fan of horror films. If you're a fan of film and filmmaking and oral histories of what it was like in Hollywood, whether you were working on a studio film or someone doing a DIY film in their backyard or with no budget.
I mean, we run the gamut in terms of the type of stuff that we talk about, the people we talk to about it. and the celebration and appreciation of all of these films. And we love making these films and we love that you guys love it. yeah, you know, the best thing, if you want to be part of this and help us get it over the line by November 3rd, go to 90shorrordoc.com. And guess what? You're probably like, well, I'll just check out on Amazon. You know, I'll get it there.
It's because we're a small company. It's not going to be on Amazon ever. It's only going to be on YouTube. Sorry, it's only going to be on eBay and it's just going to be way more expensive than it is now. And what's cool about, you know, when you buy it now, you get your name in the credits, you get a physical copy. Eventually, when you do find it on streaming somewhere, it's not going to last. Streaming is fleeting.
when, you know, in search of darkness, you can't find it anywhere unless you come to us. If you missed getting the trilogy, What's cool is if you get in search of darkness, 1990 to 94, you could also get the original trilogy box set as well. So, you know, I don't want to get into too much of a pitch mode here, but I know this is the time for it I would I would I would browsing on the website.
And like I what I love is I love that you can get, you know, some you could add when you're purchasing it, you can get add ons, you can get. this beautiful 300 page. It's the the. And search it tomorrow. Yeah, And that it's it's it just looks gorgeous. And then again, there's the other there's you know, you can get aliens expanded. There's so many different add ons that that just they just look good.
And that's what I think people need to understand here is just because this is a small creator owned product. This is not something that is just it's not low budget is again, you Just like these creators from the nineties, from the eighties, these teams, you've put your love, your soul, your heart into this and it looks like it looks the part. is a beautiful product.
And I know Chris and I have supported you from the beginning because we've known how much, I think for us, it's not just about what you're creating. It's the fact that you yourself, the energy and the dedication that you and your team have for this is just inspiring. And I think you know, since knowing you, we've, we felt that and we're like, you know, empathetically we're empaths. So we're feeling that we're feeling that energy.
And, and, and, and, you we're going to, we, we, we will always vamp about you here on, on the oblivion bar, David, because we're just such huge fans of this. And like I said, I, I honestly like thinking about this now, like, I feel like this is, if I were to equate it to anything, these are, these are time capsules. These are things that need to be recorded for a reason. for posterity, for knowledge, and honestly carried forward. And they should be in libraries. They should be in film schools.
They should be studied. They should be watched. And they should be understood because, you know, there's the old adage where if you don't study your history, you're doomed to repeat it. And I think that that's just so important. through your passion and what you've put into this at the time, the amount of the years of your life that you've put into this, it's obvious how much you love it. Yeah, thank you. Very kind words, very kind words.
put it well, I've been I've been doing this since the fall of 2018 is when I got got started. And when we did the first In Search of Darkness and it was very successfully crowdfunded and then very, very well received in 2019, we just celebrated the five year anniversary of the premiere that we had at Beyond Fest of it. I never in my wildest dreams dream.
in my wildest dreams dreamed that I would actually still be getting permission from you guys to make more of these, getting encouraged to make more, requesting, please put this in the next one, with the assumption that there will be a next one, there will be another decade. That warms my heart, that there's such a desire to see more. Hey, I look at the letterbox reviews, which can sometimes be pretty, very, very, very candid with their wording at times.
But believe it or not, I really enjoy going to Letterboxd because there's so many enthusiastic people who say, you know, tap my veins with this stuff 24 seven, you know, this was good. I can't believe it was five, five and a half hours. Why wasn't it longer? You know, but so it's it's very encouraging for that. But then again, you know, then again on the flip side, I think one of my favorite. letterbox reviews is it was a one line review. It said, why the fuck was this five hours long?
And I just laughed hysterically. like, I cannot disagree with you if that's a good question mark over that one. No context. I think, you know, when I do say when you say, what do I say to everybody? These things are very watchable. They're wonderfully edited. Alex Townley is our new editor under the tutelage of Samuel Way, who is our previous editor who continues to work on our other projects like Aliens Aliens Expanded, and he's doing the thing expanded now. Alex is amazing.
These all feel and move so fast. And the way they're organized is because it's year by year, movie by movie, chapter by chapter. There's at any given time you could just stop and come back and pick up and you don't feel like you've missed a thing. And most people say, well, I'll just watch maybe a half hour. Next thing they know, they're five hours in and they're wishing they were an adult diaper. I got it for for just complete.
I'm losing my words right now, but I want to be I want to be I got to ask for my own edification. I was gonna say, I want to be selfish. That's the word I was looking for. Go for it. I want to be selfish. In 1991, The Guyver came out. is that in there? I know it's not necessarily a horror movie. It's more sci-fi. It's more sci-fi. It's more sci-fi. There are some things that are kind of sci-fi adjacent. You never know if I might be doing I'm in search of tomorrow. 1990s.
And if that's the case, and that was a consideration in making my decisions. And here's the problem with these movies. It's a good problem to have. There are so many amazing titles. So I can guarantee you that your favorite is in here. And I can guarantee you that your other favorite is not in here, whatever it may be. Just because there's only so much room in each year. And we added television as well.
So because there's some intermittent television, there's movies, there's movies from around the world, there's movies that were studio releases, there's movies that went straight to video, shot on video, and everything that was indie in between. It was a remarkable decade, it was a remarkable half decade. And when you start looking at the, you know, just the, I don't want to, I don't want to reveal. But, you know, there were so many amazing titles.
A, it made me so happy that I could include some things. And then I had to kill my babies. I had to kill my darlings as well. We had a bunch of things where I had the segment completed, scripted, made. I put this thing together. I was like, my God, I'm like in seven and a half hour, you know, Mark, gotta, I gotta rein this thing in. It's way up. Gotta chopping it. Gotta pull a leather face. Because, you know, talking about the scripting, one of my problems Again, good problem to have.
But one of my problems is I am very mindful of how long any individual script segment should be, literally by length. And I'll always be right on the mark, whether it's within 30 seconds, longer or shorter. I know exactly how much it's going to be based on how quickly or slowly people talk. But I know how long it's going to be. And I intend to try and keep these short and sweet, maybe three minutes, maybe three and a half minutes. But then something takes over and I'm not in control of myself.
I'm like, I got to include this. this is a nerd side. Everyone wants to hear this. this is this. No one's ever heard this. I got to include this. The next thing I know, my pieces are pushing seven minutes and these are just for just the movies, not even the chapters we're talking about. And I get to the point where I'm like, I got to rein it back. I got to rein it back. It's going to be too much.
Yet I still made I got to cut it all down and I still have to literally cut out full movie segments that were in there and now they're not. again, apologies if the film that you really wanted is not in there and congratulations if the film that you really wanted is in there. Well, I'll keep my fingers crossed that in the future there's like a there's a, you know, in search of tomorrow, 90 to 94, 95 to 99, because I know there's a ton of stuff that I would love to see you talk about.
I'm gonna talk about like Viper and SeaQuest and all of these amazing television shows. you're, since you're including, I know it would be hard with, with sci-fi in the, in the nineties because there's just so many movies, but maybe you could fit TV in there. But I appreciate it. I've, I've kept you for far too long, but I'm going to let, you know, before I let you go, I'm going to hand it off to you one last time. How can people follow you?
Support you again support in search of darkness 90 through 94. You know, give them give them the deets. Yeah, absolutely everyone. Please go to 90shorrordoc.com 90shorrordoc.com all of our socials are still it's 80s 80s horror doc whether it's Instagram or Facebook or Twitter X but it runs until midnight on October. It's not even October. We pushed it. So now you get the extra weekend. So November 3rd, Sunday at midnight at the the witching hour.
You can you have between now and Sunday night to get it. And you know, if you've never seen in search of darkness, I can't promise if this is 100 % happening, but I'd say it's probably a 99 % chance. Stay tuned to all of our socials.
When on October 6th, we ran it in search of darkness for free on YouTube on wow For for a little anniversary present because it was the fifth anniversary it went over very very well and We're aiming to potentially do that again, and if we do it's gonna be on Halloween So if you've never seen in search of darkness, or you want to sort of revisit it get in the spooky spirit That's the place to see it YouTube is a big place, right?
So you got to go to our socials and we'll tell you where and how to see it. yeah, 90shorrordoc.com. And if you were a big horror fan, tell your friends. And if you're like, love horror, but I don't really care about the 90s because the CGI sucked. Well, check out our trailer at the very least. And you might be reminded of things that you forgot and you might get a little excited about things that you'd like to discover.
And I guarantee you that you will learn new things and perhaps get a better appreciation of the dynamics of all that was going on in that first half of the decade. I'll tell people it's the same reason that I started listening to country music. You know, I don't listen to it all the time, but now I dabble every once in a while because somebody was like, do you listen to country music one day? And I said, no, country music sucks. And they're like, how do you know?
I said, because that's the way it is. And then I, and they're like, well, how do you know if you don't try it out? So I gave it a shot and guess what? There's some good country music out there, just like nineties. you know, horror. There's some good 90s horror out there. And even if you don't like it, there's some bad stuff that you can just appreciate because of how bad it is. So go check it out again. Thank you so much, David, for for for joining us.
It is an absolute honor every time to have you on the show. You're just again, it's such a pleasure getting to talk to you. I know Chris wanted to be here very badly. My regards to Chris feel better next time around. Absolutely. And who knows? Maybe we'll cross paths at Comic Con again. That would be the dream. So again, thank you for being here and thank you for listening everybody. We will see you next time.