Behind the Spooky #02 — Producer Dan Wilder on Horror Filmmaking

Conversation transcript, edited from an automatic transcription. Minor transcription errors may remain; not checked word for word against the audio. Advertising and separate introductory promotional material omitted. Speaker changes are not individually labeled.

Behind the Spooky. Hey, my friends. Henrique back with you for another Behind the Spooky, the Patreon exclusive podcast. And I hope you're doing very well. It is the start of April and wow, 2021 is zooming right by. Not quite as fast as 2020 did, but it sure is zooming by. I want to say a huge thank you to you guys who are listening because your support is really allowing me to keep making this show and has allowed me to all through the pandemic.

And I know I've thanked you a million billion times, but I'll never be able to thank you enough. So it's a start. But this week we have a very special sit-down interview with somebody I consider to be a dear friend. Our producer, Dan Wilder. You've probably heard me reference Dan many times throughout the run of the show. Dan is my right-hand man. Dan is the guy I turn to when I'm doing just about any project.

When I met him, he was a movie reviewer who had written some graphic novels, done some work on video games. and the like and we struck up a friendship now dan has written several feature films several which i have directed most notably the film ouija room which you can find free on tubi tv.com or even on amazon prime i think it's for rent right now on there but that was one of our big big collaborations we also collaborated heavily on boggy creek the series which you can watch on Amazon Prime, totally free with your Prime membership.

Since then, Dan and I have become incredible collaborative partners, and I can't really imagine I would have been able to do this show without him. Dan is very talented, but more importantly, and this is something I want to really get across, Dan is enthusiastic, and enthusiasm is so much more valuable than even talent is in the realm of creativity because some days you do not want to get up and do the thing you're tired you're weak but when you're enthusiastic that beats everything and I can speak from experience because as I'm recording this I'm still recovering from you know the thing that's going around from COVID-19.

And even with all the exhaustion and rest, I have to give myself. I woke up this morning and I was like, Oh yes, I want to do this because I really want to give you guys your bonus podcast on the first of April. So, uh, this is no April fool's joke. Anyway, let's bring Dan Wilder in and have a little chat with him right here on behind the spooky. Do you remember the first time I brought up the idea of doing a, uh, a horror podcast?

Yes. Yeah, I do. I know we were discussing different avenues to get stories out and, uh, we were working heavily. I believe we had finished up, we'd finished up babysitter massacre, heavy metal and we had started uh doing other projects and stuff and then all of a sudden you came to me and you're like hey let's do a what do you think about a a podcast featuring you know scary stories from a variety of different authors and i happen to know uh an author by the name of joe solmo who had set up his own website called penned in blood and they had a lot of prose stories that were just out there but didn't really have a lot of avenues for people to discover them.

And that's when we kind of originally at the beginning married the two things together. We plucked our first couple of stories from there, a few authors from there, and now those are authors like Shane Migliabaca and Joe Soma who continue to write for Weekly Spooky today. And well, and I remember the Pendant Blood thing. That was kind of like your, correct me if I'm wrong, but that was kind of your earliest job as producer was to shuffle through the Pendant Blood stories and pick out ones you thought would fit the show.

Yeah, and it was cool, too, because I'd already read a lot of them because I've, you know, Joe would send them to me as he wrote them. I had written two stories on that website, one of which was used, The God Tongue, which was used in Weekly Spooky. And Shane had written a ton of stuff, and I always edit his stuff because we've been friends for 30-plus years. So we always bounce stuff back and forth between the two of us.

So what was the response when you started talking to your author friends, saying, like, hey, I'm helping put together this horror story narration podcast? What was their response initially? they were excited uh i know joe in particular was was really down for it you know it just says another avenue to get his work out there and and shane also very very into it those guys are low key i mean you're not going to get ticker tape parades and backflips when you give them good news but but fortunately i can read them well after years of of being with them are you trying to say that authors are eccentric i don't i don't understand well i wouldn't go so far as to say that but yeah they totally are so they were they were pumped i remember um joe solmo started reaching out to me directly every now and then sending me just a link to a story from pendant blood he thought would really would fit well uh he's been very excited about it and every now and then i'll out the blue, I'll get a message from him.

It's like, here's a new story. And I'm like, Ooh, okay. Yeah. Let's do it. And I think that's the good thing about the show. There's an immediate, what I want to say, like an immediate venue for a story. Like these guys come up with stories and now they have a reason to, to get it out there because they want to hear it on the show. So that increases their desire to, to write obviously.

Well, that's been one of the most flattering parts of doing the show from my perspective has been that authors have told me that this has encouraged them to be more prolific and to knock out short stories. Because obviously it would be pretty stupid if I didn't love short fiction. It'd be pretty impressive. I've managed this long. I love short fiction. I love the idea because I've always been kind of a weak reader.

So I've always liked when I can sit down with something for 20 minutes or 30 minutes and get the whole experience. So, um, you know, but there's not much of an avenue for short stories. Um, I don't think, I mean, for the magazines that even exist anymore, they don't really publish them anymore. Yeah. I was just going to say, I mean, gone are the days of the, the wonderful pulp magazines that would bring you short stories from Lovecraft or problematic as that is now, or Howard Phillips or whatever, or not Howard Phillips, uh, uh, what else Robert E.

Howard or people like that. Well, or even Playboy magazine would run short stories. You know, lots of magazines would run maybe one or two short stories in an issue that was mostly pictorials and articles and, you know, and things like that. And now that seems to be gone. You know, if you go to like Dread Central or Bloody Disgusting, there's no fiction published there. It's just news now. It's just, you know, which is kind of a surprise in some ways. you'd think that like they would print some horror fiction.

They should get on that. You should talk to your people at, I feel terrible. Horror fuel, horror fuel. Yeah. Okay. I did remember it. See, it was, I did remember it, but it was like one of those things where it's worse to be wrong than to not remember. It's, it's fine. I mean, I've written for so many online venues for, for my side gig of reviewing films that I forgive you for not remembering every website.

Do stuff for the horror fuel. Should get on that. they should publish some short fiction. Um, you never know, maybe people would like it, but, uh, but I mean, and that's kind of, I guess part of that is the, uh, the culture, you know, we've kind of, um, everything's become kind of niche, niche, you know, like, so now it's like, we don't, you know, the variety shows kind of dead because of the internet, you can just get, you can build your own variety show.

You can watch a half an hour of talk and then go, now I want to watch people singing. And then you can watch your hour of singing and be like, okay, now I want to watch movie. That's a really good point that I never really thought of before. Um, yeah, it's, you're right. And it's, you know, too long. Didn't read culture too. It's, it's making everything into sound bites and quick headlines and stuff.

So, yeah, well, the funny thing I've, and I don't want to get on a tangent that's not directly related, but the funny thing is, you know, people always talk about the short attention spans, uh, but it's so confusing because on one hand, yeah, an internet video, they want it to be short, but movies just seem to be getting longer and longer every time i go to the movie theater it's two hours two and a half hours for i mean like the things that are big hits and then it's like what's just a leak for justice league yeah but but it's like but what's an even bigger you know what's a competing uh a hit to long blockbuster movies oh yeah television series that are 12 seasons or 12 episodes a season yeah and go on and on and i'm not complaining i mean i've watched breaking bad all the way through twice I'm just saying that like I kind of sometimes I have to call BS on the idea that the attention span is shorter because like the biggest media hits take forever to ingest.

Yeah, but but those are spoon fed to you. You're not physically sitting down and using your brain to read them. No, that's definitely true. I mean, I do think that reading on the Internet is reading, but it is a different type of reading. But it's still reading. Like I always get frustrated when people say like, well, nobody reads anymore. I'm like, well, you actually literacy is pretty important nowadays. If you want to use that awesome computer in your pocket, I'd say they read even more because they're on.

It's the quality of the content that they're reading is a little bit different, but they're reading all the time. Yeah. It's like, oh, you're reading all your friends posts. That doesn't have any tentacles or Satanism in it. What are you even doing? Unless it's my posts. Well, yeah, that's a whole other conversation for a whole other day. so so um so as far as producing the show i know that the show it's it's changed a lot yeah over the course of its of its year and a half ish run so far um because at this juncture we've brought in a lot of authors yeah my original goal or goal my original job was to find talent and bring them in and now it's just like we have such a stable of talented writers that that function has changed.

I'd say my role on the show now is a lot of people bounce ideas off from me. There's a lot of online follow-up to things. I proofread some stuff, although that's been dicey here and there. Mostly it's just a conversational aspect of the show. I make sure people are working on stuff sometimes. I'm always online because I'm up all the time. So people bounce ideas off from me or say, Hey, do you think Henrique would go for this?

There's a lot of stuff. I don't even know if you know about it that goes on between the authors and myself before it gets to you. So you can handle your components and not be bothered by the minutia of what's going on with the authors. I only vaguely knew about that because on my, from my perspective, like if somebody shoots me a story, we have a pretty tried and true rule on weekly spooky, which is once you've done us good like twice pretty much any story you send in is going to get on yeah and i mean that's a good thing about the show too you definitely are not like i don't know about this for content like it's anyone that listens to the show man it's pretty much anything goes over there so you know we can as authors and myself included i don't i'm not as prolific as some of the other guys but there's no there's no limits on what i can do creatively like i i can just run rampant which is, which is great.

There's literally only one rule on weekly spooky. And that is you can't be overtly political. A guy sent in a story once that was literally about Trump. And I don't mean like it was about like a Trump like figure, right? His name was Trump. And it's, it's funny. It's funny. You mentioned that because another role is producer that I do. And our authors will, will tell you this is real names real bands real shows i try to keep that stuff to a bare bones minimum because one it's going to date what your piece horribly um and two it gets dicey i mean you never know i mean we we deal in the entertainment industry these should these stories could potentially get turned into other things i mean i can't say anything else but but you got to keep that stuff yeah temper that stuff because that's a whole new can of worms when you start getting into specifics literally when people send a submission in to weekly spooky at gmail.com it just immediately gets knocked over to dan and i'm like dan dan reads because dan's a faster reader and he knows what i like so dan looks at it and if dan thinks it's right for the show and he tells me it's right for the show then i'm that's all i need to know i do a lot more on the show than I think I realized I do because I do it all on my couch.

It doesn't seem like actual, actual work, but yeah, I'm, I, that's what I do. I, I, if things come my way, I, I, I read it and I, uh, I may make some changes or things like that, but it's to get it show ready. You know, We have authors who have been writing short fiction, I mean, for a very, very long time. And we have writers who are a year or two in to writing anything.

So some guys need no help or very little help. And some guys need like a nice, supportive editorial hand, which is what you provide them. Yep. And I like that. That's one of the aspects of the show that I think is really great. is that it's an even playing field. And if, if it's your first go around or your 30th or 400th, it doesn't really matter. You're going to get the same kind of kind of treatment in the same, the same opportunity to get your stuff on the air.

Well, and that's been the funnest part is when somebody submits a story and they're excited and we get, I mean, some submissions are people just penning something for weekly spooky. Some submissions are people who already have short stories they've published and they enjoy the show. So they send them my way and say, Hey, well, you, you know, if you like the story, you can read it, just please mention the book, you know, and I'm happy to do that.

You know, they're all, they're all exciting to us. Like we just had an author, he just published a book of short stories and immediately sent me a PDF and was like huge fan of your movies and your podcast. Read any and all of the stories you want whenever you want. Yeah, that's fantastic. That's fantastic. And that, you know, it works both ways. We get material, they get, they get some publicity and a chance to have a voice.

It's a, it's a really great thrill to, to hear your stuff read by others. And, you know, you put emotion into it and you, you put some acting into it. It's, it's just a new, a new experience for a lot of these guys. And I think it's really beneficial. Well, I've had a great time doing it. You know, one of the reasons when I decided to do this, I mean, I wouldn't have done it if you hadn't joined up with me on it.

I mean, there's a reason at the end of every episode I mentioned my producer, Dan, and it's because I am not as learned or experienced in the world of prose and the world of short fiction. If I didn't have you as a gauge to help me get things done, I don't know what I would do. I appreciate that. And I think, you know, I'm always grateful for all the opportunities you've given me, but I'm also grateful because you've given me the opportunity to play the role you played in developing my career with some of these other guys.

And friends of mine that for years, you know, they've wanted to create, but they haven't had that opportunity to go crazy. And it's fun to see them blossom and advance their careers as well. And it's hard to explain to other creative people when you're, I mean, I don't consider myself to be a, you know, massively successful person, but I know that I have a lot more success than many people in the fields I've gone into.

I'm very fortunate in that way, but like, it's hard to explain to some people when they're, when they feel like all they do is languish in obscurity. It's hard for me to have to explain like, yeah, man, me too. I languished in obscurity for like nine years. you just keep, you know, you keep working through it. And, you know, one thing that I didn't have as much when I was starting out as I would like was not necessarily mentors, but just somebody who would literally be like, Hey, here's a small manageable opportunity.

Would you like it? Well, that's, that's, that's the thing. Like I said, that's what I love about the show is that it's, it's a fun way for us to help people get over and, and start, you know, on a path to, to maybe building something a little bit more out of their creativity than they could have on their own. One of the most flattering elements of the show has been encouraging the writers like Rob Fields is probably my favorite example.

Rob and I have just, we've been friends and he's been a fan of my work for a really long time, more than 10 years. I met him at a, at a horror movie convention in Cleveland. And when I first met him and he bought a couple of my movies, I forget the order of incidents, but he gave me a copy of a book he wrote years ago, a little novel, kind of a young adult ish novel called the April fool.

I don't know where my copy is, but I remember the title, Rob. I know you're listening, Rob. Uh, and, uh, but I really enjoyed that book and young adult was, is always been up my alley. I was an RL Stein fan and a Christopher Pike fan growing up. And, you know, fast forward years upon years later, and I hear very few peeps from Rob about writing. He and I are, you know, we're good buddies.

We chat on the internet. We, uh, you know, we play PlayStation together, stuff like that. Right. And when I started doing this at one point, I forget if I asked him or he asked me, but it just kind of came up like about writing a couple stories. And now Rob is one of the most prolific writers on weekly spooky. I have something like eight unpublished stories from him. Yeah. That's crazy because you know, I don't want every single week to be the same author.

I try to, you know, at least have a break here and there, but his strict field series, which the people who've been listening since the beginning, they are really invested in strict field, you know, in this, in this world he's created on the show. And I love it. Yeah. He's like, he's like the MCU of weekly spooky. Yeah. Yeah. That's why I always mentioned to me, I'm like, we're heading back to strict field because I want to make sure that they're aware, you know, time to put on your seatbelts.

Right. And, and that's been the only thing, you know, when Rob and I discuss the stories, the biggest thing we discuss is like, I always tell him, he's like, is it okay to make it all tie together? I'm like, as long as it makes overall sense to a person who's just tuned in. Right. So you can take any one of the individual components and it would still make sense on its own, be a strong story on its own.

Exactly. But I love the idea that if you've been listening since the beginning, or if you go back and listen, all of a sudden those stories will become more rich, you know, they'll, they'll become more, more meaningful to the listener. That's a beautiful gift to give them for dedicating to our entertainment, you know, to the entertainment we're creating. Absolutely. And it just, it just shows their commitment to, to creating quality content for our show.

My point being that, you know, it blew my mind that now Rob is so productive. I mean, he's making so much content and being so creative. I love it for him because he's, he's become my friend. And then he, which is pretty much the opposite of all the other people who worked on the show who were authors in the show, who became my friends he was a friend who became an author uh similar to like keith tomlin michelle adler uh you know they were friends who became authors on the show but most everybody became authors who became friends luckily i wasn't shocked by all the friends i've made on the show because i've been in show business long enough to know you make friends if you do right by people and have a good time yeah and i and that ties back in i mean like it's it's a wonderful opportunity we have to provide people an outlet for their creativity.

So I know in this industry, it's, it's small. And a lot of times people are very guarded and they don't want to help others because they don't know when their next opportunity is coming. But I'm glad that we're not like that at all. I've always believed that, you know, you know, don't hold back ideas. Don't hold back concepts. Just do them because you'll come up with new ideas. Oh yeah, totally. You know, but, but, but I do see, I mean, when I was younger, less experienced and a little more insecure, I did have this fear, you know, that maybe this was the last idea, you know, uh, early on.

Well, especially when you come up with a, I mean, pardon the brag, but like a great idea, you know, you make a movie, people really love it and it's very successful, you know, then the pressure's on, it's like, okay, how many more excellent ideas you got there, buddy. And you're all of a sudden, you're like, I don't know. I don't know how I did it well the first time, you know? Yeah.

And it's, it's true. Ideas are really never ending. You might get blocked here and there, but you know, there's always another great story coming. Yeah, no. And the folks that do stories for Weekly Spooky have proven that. And not only that, you know, we can talk about it a little bit because this is a secret show, but we're developing a television anthology series right now. And we've heavily involved Joe Salmo and Shane Migliavaca.

And you're actually more, I mean, we're co-showrunners, but you are more of the showrunner than I am. Well, I really took to the concept of the show when you mentioned it to me. I don't know. I just really felt like it was something that I really, really wanted to do and run with. And even though I'm doing two episodes of this project. As director, you're directing two episodes. As writer, director, yeah.

And then I have concepts for more seasons, so I'm ready. I think that what we're going to provide people with this upcoming show is something really special. And if people like Weekly Spooky, I guarantee they're going to like at least part of the show. so oh and uh it was just announced yesterday by the way uh our our tv series uh which is coming i mean i don't know exactly when it's coming but it is coming we're working on it a lot the key art the artwork that was created for the show was created by an artist named rich hilliard who works with us on lots and lots of stuff uh his artwork got selected as the key art for season two of creep show the series so we have the same artist that did our key art that did creep show to creep show season two, which is just kind of a cool, uh, side note, you know?

Yeah, that's awesome. I mean, I just found that out. What are the chances that that would happen? Pretty good because you know, everybody. And that was literally a dumb moment. I was like, I got to come up with this great art. And then I was like, wait, why don't I call my buddy rich? He does art for like vinegar syndrome and shutter. Right. It's like, so I called him on his personal phone.

Hey Rich, you want to do some stuff? Yeah, man. I mean, I only, I only met him once at, uh, Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. You got to meet him at a chiller and he's, he's a nice guy. He's a really nice guy. Oh, he's a hoot. I would love that. He's somebody, he doesn't really involve with weekly spooky. So I don't really know why I would interview him, but he's somebody I would love to just talk to.

That'll come for the, for the mindset, the bonus material on the series that we're doing. There we go. See, you're always thinking. And that's one of the reasons I love you. You're always thinking. Yes. Me. Yeah. Always thinking. you know i just want to say you know as we wrap this up i'm thrilled that we're doing the the found footage tv series i don't know if i mentioned the title before but we're doing this yeah i don't know if i could mention it i feel like you know we're just talking to the patreon so it's just between us girls you know um but uh no you know we've been doing that and one of the reasons that i'm so glad we've been able to do that so much is 2020 messed up a lot of people's lives and a lot of people's plans and i feel honestly one of the people that i feel like was affected the worst by it was you because you had your, your directing momentum begin.

You made, you directed your first movie in 2019. Yep. And I had a great experience producing, uh, with you directing. I absolutely want to do it again sometime. And there wasn't even the thought of doing it again in 2020 for obvious reasons. Well, there wasn't until you came up with this idea. Yeah, exactly though. Exactly. So it's, that's where it gets, you know, where it gets tricky, you know? Uh, so I'm glad that we've been able to not only have, you know, that to work on, but also, you know, thank goodness weekly spooky was unaffected by the, well, other than the fact that, you know, you may have heard in my voice, how tired of everything I was on some of the episodes, but, uh, how exasperated I was getting, but I was shocked to find out that many people who listen to the show really want to know how we do it like what it takes behind the scenes i guess if i had to point out the biggest thing it would be the fact is if you if you pare down weekly spooky to its bare bare bare bones what it is is it's a passion project because i i love podcasts and i've always been obsessed with podcasting with my buddy, Dan, that's what at the bare minimum, that's what it is.

And why I keep doing it and we'll keep doing it. And I have no intention of stopping. It was so cute. You know, when we started the first one, I said, I'll give it 50 episodes. And then when I was like 40 episodes in, I was like, I said, what? Right. I don't remember that. Right. I'm going to keep going. And now we're working on our hundredth blowout episodes. Oh my God.

People are going to lose their mind on the two part hundred hundredth episode it's something i'm so excited the authors keep bragging about how gross it is that's like their favorite thing to brag about we got 10 10 authors just just you wait i mean i've read i've read a lot of them that have come in so and i'm writing one so before we take off is there anything else you'd like to to cover about about what your your day in the life of the producer of weekly spooky is uh well there's no really set set day.

People just contact me throughout the day, mostly at night, because they know that's when I generally work is at night. And I just, every day is something different. I get to read new material every week. And I don't know for sure what exactly I'll be doing with each story. Some of them need proofreading. Some of them just need minor changes. Some of them, I just send your way. they just need a rubber stamp they need a rubber stamp yeah yeah like like uh jim warren used to do back in the creepy and vampirella days just stamp that artwork and if it's not good he had a bullshit stamp and just pounded that right right on the artwork so this is the first time you've ever gotten to speak directly to any of the weekly spooky audience um is there anything you'd like to say to folks who are who if they're listening is they have a financial investment in the show they they like it enough to pay more than a dollar for something that is totally free.

So if there's anything you'd like to say to them, I want to give you the opportunity right this second. Well, I'd like to thank them all for their continued support and for listening to our show. And by all means, if they've got a dark little idea percolating in their heads, get ahold of either you or me and we'll, uh, we'll develop it. Maybe we can have some new content come into the show from the, from the people that support the show itself.

I feel like I want to make a Photoshop of you over uncle Sam. I mean, I want you to write some creepy, scary shit. You do what you got to do, man. Well, thank you, Dan, for taking a hot minute out of your day to to chat with me. You know, not on the phone bitching about show business, but for once sitting down and talking positively. Right. Like we were doing like five minutes before we started doing this.

Yeah. Full disclosure. I'm still in my recovery from, you know, the thing and from the thing that's going around. And, uh, and we were talking on the phone, just bullshit. And actually one of the reasons I called you to say was to say, I probably can't record today. And about 20 minutes in our conversation, I was like, actually my brain's working pretty good. Let's do it. And you know something I want everyone that listens to this to know that's exactly what our relationship has been like for, you know, as long as we've been doing stuff.

About three years. Yeah. Maybe more. Well, Dan, you take care. And, uh, I can't wait to, to see the, uh, the work you're doing on this next piece because, to give a little tease, the 100th episode has 10 authors involved, including Dan. It does. Because we don't want to do anything easy over at Weekly Spooky. I mean, the easiest thing we did was, thank God, I came up with it 25 weeks before we needed it done.

Right. Exactly. Exactly. Now they know the secret. That's the secret to the show. Just make shit up and make sure you got enough time to actually get it on the air. oh god remember the early days when uh when when you'd be like all right i got a story for you it'd be tuesday morning the show airs at midnight the next day to be fair the new year's story that i wrote this year i handed into you like the morning it was supposed to be recorded oh yeah that was yeah i had blocked that out i'm never i'm never late i'm always exactly on time well remember kids if you want a successful and happy career in show business have a have a bad memory that's really the way to do yep