“My posse has changed over the past few years. Now that I’m a father of two kids under 5 years old, I don’t get out to many rep screenings or conventions and I turn down most invitations to sneak peeks and movie premieres. As such, I don’t hang with the black tee shirt crowd anymore and find I’m commiserating with other parents online … and a (perhaps not) surprising number of these are horror lifers who either carry the creep torch blog-wise or actually make horror movies. I decided to corral some of these horror dads for a roundtable discussion of the challenges involved in raising children when one’s tastes run to the grotesque and arabesque (to put it diplomatically).”
So begins Richard Harland Smith’s nifty a three-part horror movie roundtable over at TCM’s Movie Morlocks entitled The Incredibly Strange Film Fiends Who Had Kids and Became Mixed-Up Horror-Dads: Part 1, the first installment of which debuted on the site today. The panel represents a good mix of writers and filmmakers who are unrepentant horror dads- old friend Greg Ferrara of Cinema Styles, along with new friends Jeff Allard, creator of the horror blog Dinner with Max Jenke (Jeff also writes for Shock Till You Drop and Cinefantasique); Paul Gaita, a terrific writer who has penned for everything from The Los Angeles Times to the legendary genre publications Famous Monsters of Filmland and Sleazoid Express; writer-director Nicholas McCarthy, whose daughter grew up in the shadow of a vintage Night of the Living Dead poster; Richard, of course, and Yours Truly (that’s my little contribution to the new generation of horror fandom baring her fangs above).
The discussion is brisk, wide-ranging and fun—at least we thought so—and if nothing else really underlines the common themes that seem to occur in growing up a horror fan—the encouragement, the disbelief, the feelings of loneliness, of being an outsider, and the flipside of that loneliness—the joy of loving something you know nobody else quite gets or, better yet, which totally grosses everybody else out.
The roundtable went on long enough— this is what happens when you get a bunch of grown-up, verbiage-oriented horror geeks and turn them loose to talk about their passions— that Richard will have at least one more segment coming next week, perhaps two. Bookmark Movie Morlocks to keep up with the gab and all the other good stuff that goes on there daily from their excellent staff of writers.
P.S. I finally saw Inception last night, and I promise to write it up, along with about four or five other long-gestating projects this weekend. No hints. Okay, just one… it turns out to have something to do with dreams…
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