Hello, everyone.

Welcome back to Potomac Station Coffee House.

We have a scary show for you tonight.

I am, that's Davi and this is our Gen X Pittsburgh podcast.

Tonights guest is DJ and cult film historian Bill Van Ryn.

Oh my God, Bill is one of my favorite people.

I know you guys have a long history together, I do.

He is the man that shaved my head for the first time, really, in the kitchen on Mount Washington 469 Gray Street.

Wow.

That was probably the least the botched thing that ever happened before 69 Gray Street.

Was it was it was it like, completely bald or was it like a little bit of stubble there.

There was no stubble.

Yeah.

Yes.

Wow.

Guess who shaved my head.

Guess who shaved my head?

You know who did it?

I don't yeah, you do.

You know who?

Perry Farrell from Janes Addiction.

And I shaved his head.

And then he shaved my head.

We were on tour.

Why?

Do you know the famous people?

You did.

I knew Bill and so Bill shaved my head.

Well, he's a pretty.

He's a pretty popular, famous guy.

But when we were in college, we were.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's very cool.

Right.

So when we were, Does he still know I do it in the show?

Natural?

No, it's not natural.

No, no.

But, you know, when we were going and seeing bands like My Lif with the Thrill Kill Kult, Lords of Acid together, that's my God.

Those were the days.

Yes, those were the days.

Yeah, I know, I know, so, yeah.

So what is your favorite horror movie?

Do you have one?

No, I, I have to admit, I am not a connoisseur of cult horror films.

I'm very excited to learn a little bit and find out why and how.

And yeah, I mean, I'm probably a not a grea but a bigger fan of cult films.

Yeah, whatever that means.

You know, I'm going to ask them like what's.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And, and maybe some exploitation sort of films, you know what I mean?

I can remember naughty boy.

Well, I don't know if I was, I can remember sneaking like a copy of, we had a sleepover.

You get Playboys?

No, “I Spit on your Grave.” What is that?

Oh, it's a horrible film from the 70s, I think.

70s.

Okay maybe Bill can talk about that.

It's an atrocious film.

I don't even want to tell you the content, but just trust me, you never want to see it.

I'm not going to watch it.

Yeah.

You're not?

No you're not.

Okay.

Yeah.

And then.

And then I probably didn't see another horror film until Halloween.

Yeah.

Like I get I'm one of those people that, like, hide with when I like, you know, under the cover when I watch the.

My wife Kim is the brave one in the house to watch.

No way.

Really?

Yes.

Oh.

Not me.

No, not not me.

I get scared watching Law and Order when I'm by myself.

Right?

So.

Yeah.

So I'm very looking forward to it.

Yes, so am I, so am I. Yeah.

DJ, a film historian, and he's done so much.

It's going to be great.

It's going to be a fabulous show.

Welcome back to GXP We Are Here with Bill Van Ryn.

Oh my God, how are you?

I'm scared already.

I'm kidding.

Of me?

Not of you.

Not of you.

I'm just teasing.

But thank you for joining us here tonight.

Thank you for asking me.

Im glad to be here.

You know, Bill, before we even start, I just want to say it's something to be sitting next to a guy who you knew in college.

Yeah, it's just like a kid, right?

We were kids.

And now look at you.

All grown up and accomplished.

And you've got your own IMDb IMDb page, and.

And you're something talking to a bunch of.

And nobodies who have a podcast.

Not true in either count.

Well, we love having you here, and we have so much to talk to you about tonight, but can we start off?

Can you tell us about where you grew up, what your family life was like back in the day?

Were you a latchkey kid?

Did you grow up on the yacht or the country club?

Tell us about yourself.

No, I have a blue collar, middle class background.

I grew up in Springdale, Pennsylvania, not too far from New Kensington or Harmarville Those are the two most high profile names that I can throw out there.

Springdale, the home of Rachel Carson, former.

She no longer lives there.

And I, you know, was a pretty typical I had a pretty typical high school experience.

It wa it wasn't quite John Hughes but you know and.

What else should I say?

I'm not sure.

Well, you did have really cool Robert Downey Jr hair.

Robert Downey Jr.

Yeah.

Do you mean Robert Smith?

Well, let's say Robert Smith.

Sure.

No.

I looked very strange in high school.

I was goth before there was a term for goth.

Really?

Nobody called it.

You know, we we all dressed in black, and obviously I'm still dressing all in black.

Not much has changed.

And it's.

It was sort of like jus happening when I was doing it.

And you know, as a kid, you, you have things that you're attracted t and you're like, oh, that's me.

So I used to see things and I emulated that, and I was the only one in my school doing it.

But I used to get together at this place called.

Club X. Was it a place called where did Gwar play all their concerts?

Oh City Limits.

That's right, that's right.

I forgot about that place, City Limits.

That was the place where you met all the people that were like you.

Wow, who were a little bit different.

Were like the goth kids and everything.

So that was a lot of fun.

I was lucky to have had something like that.

And, you know, it was under 17.

Just go and hang out.

No booze and lots of great music.

There was a great radio station back then and called WXXP.

That's right.

Yeah.

And played things that were considered alternative in its time.

Now it's all it's so strange how different it is today, how less compartmentalized people's interests are.

And there's a lot of cross-pollination now.

Were you?

I didn't mean to interrupt you.

No.

Were you into music as as much as you were when, when I knew you in college back then?

Oh, yeah.

Yeah How did you find out about it?

Because you were sort of really into that really deep sort of dive of electronic music that you couldn't just walk into National Record Mart and find out about.

There weren't any magazines o there were very few magazines.

How did you find out about all this stuff?

I was lucky to have some cool friends who listened to some interesting music.

I had a friend whose name was also Bill, and he was sort of my best friend in high school, and he was into a lot of cool stuff.

He was really into the Human League.

Yeah.

So that's sort of and, you know, we all knew who the Human League was.

I used to like stuff like that.

And he called it beep beep music.

And I don't know why he didn't think the Human League was beep beep music.

But, you know, that was just sort of my jam.

Ever since I was a kid, I was attracted to synths.

That song popcorn, I don' want to get a copyright strike, but it was sort of like th first Moog synth song out there.

And then, there was a lot of other stuff, like I remember listening to Emerson, Lake and Palmer.

Lucky Man.

Yeah, that that weird groanin that used to just entranced me.

Heart did it a lot in their music.

So it's not it's not surprising that that caught on.

You know, people were really interested in that kind of it was new.

It was happening at the tim and we didn't have any context for it.

So it was kind of exciting.

But what about horror film where you ended those as a child or how did that come about?

Always.

Really?

Yeah.

You were scared as a child watching those?

Absolutely.

That was the point.

My dad was really into horro movies and scary, scary movies.

Monster movies.

And he showed me the movie Gargoyles, which was a made for TV film.

Yeah, but I was two years old.

Wow.

My mom was furious when she found out, but that sort of started me on my journey.

Because, you know, when you're that young, you don't yet understand that this is just fantasy an these things really don't exist.

And it encouraged me to believe that these things existed.

And I was like, wow, it has to be.

It was right there on, on screen.

So that was really exciting for me.

Even though it was scary, I, I didn't want to stop watching movies like that.

Did you go to the drive-in theater a lot?

I mean, I know we're going to talk about the culture but did you go there as a kid?

We did.

Yeah, that was it was an inexpensive way to entertain your family.

Where did you go?

Here in Pittsburgh?

Well, don't forget, I grew up in, you know, the Springdale area, and we went the drive in that we most often went to was the gateway Drive-In in New Kensington.

Okay.

There was also one in Natron Heights called the Sunset View.

Oh, wow.

I don't remember that.

It was Natrona Heights, you know, that's a little further out.

And mostly it was a they did have listings for it in the Pittsburgh paper every once in a while.

Yeah.

When I was growing up, there was the Greater Valley Drive in theater, which is which on route 30 in North Versailles.

And they didn't play.

I mean, they probably did and I wasn't aware of it, but it tended to be a lot of Disney and films like Grease 2, that you would see there.

Those are the ones that started before midnight.

The scary ones happened at midnight.

Right.

Yeah that was a lot of what I saw at the Drive-In was not horror films.

It was just live action.

Disney.

The Million Dollar Duck.

What was the one with the two kids?

No Deposit, No Return.

That's one that I'll never forget, even though I barely remembered the title.

I can remember seeing stuff like that at the drive in all the time.

And my mom hated scary movies, and she would not take me to see horror films unless I begged.

I had to absolutely beg to go see a horror movie.

I could she could be swayed, but she didn't like it.

Yeah, well, so you took all of thes sort of cult and pulp references from your childhood, including newspapers, and we should probably talk about that as we move on.

But and sort of came up with what I remember from college, the, the radio program.

No Wire Hangers.

The No Wire Hangers show.

Which was really a cult classic at Point Park.

I mean, people really enjoyed that show.

It was, you know, a lot.

A lot of it was the hype.

I chose that because I was obsesse with the movie Mommie Dearest.

It sounds funny to say that now, but I just made all these crazy fliers.

I remember putting them up all around school, and that's really all there was to that.

But because I just had a shift just like everybody else at the station.

But I did play a lot of dialog from the film during my time on the air.

So people remembered that.

And I also had a shift the night that the Globe went into production, our school newspaper and they would stay up all night getting the newspaper.

It would come out on a Thursday.

Yeah.

That's right.

So Wednesday night, that was my show.

And they would listen to me in the Globe while they were working, and I often tailored my playlist to suit them.

Yeah, I remember it.

Im not being, I'm not kidding when I say that it was sort of a cult favorite.

It really did catch on at the school and became one of the sort of premier shows for people.

And because of a lot o the stuff that you were doing, like putting movie clips in and, and like playing that sort of Pet Shop Boys and electronic sort of bridging the gap between maybe the dance floor and pop music.

Yeah.

And it was on that fabulous AM station too.

That was like a half a watt.

That's right.

And you could get it in the building and maybe, maybe if you hadn't intended.

Were standing outside of the building.

If it wasn't cloudy.

Right.

Right.

So which came first, your your radio show or deejaying?

Like, how did that all?

The radio show came first.

Yeah.

I didn't DJ until after college.

Okay, okay.

97 was when I got my first gig.

Wow.

Where was that?

In a club.

No, I first DJd at Lucky's, The Real Luck Cafe, which only recently closed.

I think it's closed now, but it was there for ages and age and they gave me my first gig.

I spu there for about three months and that's about as far as it went.

After that I got a gig a the Eagle, the Pittsburgh Eagle, which was a much bigger place, and there were some, I got into an argument one night at Lucky's with a patron who demanded to hear Toni Braxton.

And not only di she want to hear Toni Braxton, I had already played Toni Braxton.

She was like, no you didn't play the right song.

And I was like, well, it's not Toni Braxton night.

I'm sorry.

Oh my gosh, that's hilarious.

I got severely reprimanded by the manager of the bar and I was like, you know what?

Actually, I think this will be my last gig here tonight.

And that's probably something to many DJ' can can relate, can relate to.

Right.

I remember the upstage going up to the guy and asking him to play, you know, whatever, skinny puppy.

And he was like, dude I just played that an hour ago.

And I was like, yeah but I wasn't here then, right?

I'm here now.

Can't you play that now?

Giving me flashbacks.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So how long were you at the Eagle?

I was there for six years.

Wow.

I spun there for six years.

And then I got a gig at a club called The Link in Harmony.

Wow.

Yeah, exactly.

And I only spun there for a year before I got tired of it.

So before we go into more of the music, I remember it was around this time, I think, that you were working for Dorrance Publishing.

Yes.

And we used to.

You lived on the north side, right?

Yeah, yeah.

And we used to read.

You would have some of the manuscripts and we would read some of those manuscripts, like the one where, you know, for those who don't know, Dorrance Publishing was a publishing house here in Pittsburgh, in it was here for a long time I think.

But this was the 90s, and they were a self-publishing place.

So basically as long as it wasn't libelous, they were going to publish it.

Right.

But so Bill's job was to see did it have libel, you know, what was it?

You know.

And oftentimes the funny ones did, you know, like there was I remember a particular manuscript where somebody connected Mick Jagger and Bill Clinton and all these sort of, like, crazy bizarre.

Yeah Do you remember that?

That was.

Oh, I, I it's burned into my brain.

It was about a 50 page handwritten screed about how Mick Jagger was living inside this guy's head.

Literally.

Kurt Cobain also lived in there somewhere, and Debbie Harry was smoking a cigarette in his stomach, and she gave him V.D.. Those are just a few highlights of what I can remember from that.

Wow.

Yeah, it was good stuff.

We saw a lot of crazy things there.

I'm not sure how much I shoul actually say, but some of them, we had to call the police about i because they were like violent serial killer fantasies from people who swore that they were going to do this.

They hadn't done it yet, but this was their fantasy to do it this way.

And we called 911.

You were there for a littl while, if I remember correctly.

Yeah, I worked there for probably 5 or 6 years.

Wow.

Maybe longer.

I mean, I think that Dorrance was actually the podcast is about 80s and 90s Pittsburgh, right?

It was a really successful publishing house.

I mean, self-publishing, but it seemed to do pretty well for a long time.

It was successful for some people.

Yeah, yeah.

I don't mean I was making money off of it.

It wasn't the people that worked there.

And I don't think that th authors for the authors either.

But they didn't.

They paid.

Right.

I mean, it costs them money to do it.

I remember, though, in the back of, you know, like writers magazin and things you would find that that business, business card size ad.

Right.

Send u your manuscript will publish it.

We publish in magazines like the Enquirer, Guns and Ammo.

Wow.

We got a lot of conspiracy theories.

Yeah, I bet, but those wer the people that published, like, people who actually ha something that they wanted to.

You wouldn't do it that way.

Like, that's not the way publishing works.

So those sort of operations sort of I don't want to use the phrase preyed upon, but sort of catered to people who didn't really understand how that was supposed to work.

Right.

So you graduated from Point Park with a journalism degrees.

Is that correct?

Yes.

Yeah.

And and then you went to, like you said you did, but you were at the Eagle an you were you were deejaying and and then you had what I consider to be a fairly big deal.

Yeah.

And I know that I'm sort of probably cutting the history, so feel free to change it.

But you did some remixing for My Life with the Thrill Kill Kult, which is a huge band.

Yeah, I did.

Thats underwhelming, Bill.

Thats a big deal.

You know, no big deal.

That's like, you know.

Yeah, I know Trent Reznor, but I mean, Thrill Kill Kult was a big deal.

That was in 2001, right?

And I did that and I was working I was still deejaying at the Eagle, and I'd been I was friendly with My Life with the Thrill Kill Kult, especially the singer Frankie.

And we used to talk on the phone all the time, and he offered me a slot on that remix EP and I wasn't sure and I didn't.

I had no idea how to do a remix, like, I knew how to spin records in a club, bu I didn't know what I was doing.

And I had just gotten Acid Pro, remember Acid Pro?

I remember I still have a I can do something with this.

So I just put something together and they were like, yeah, it sounds cool, man.

So that's what you did was you recorded into acid and then cut it up in there.

Yeah, yeah yeah yeah.

I didn't do enoug cutting like looking back on it.

You know, once it's out there and it lives forever, you're like, oh, I can't bear to listen to it.

Yeah it was exciting for me because, you know, I'd never gotten my name out there.

You could walk into a Best Buy and on the back of the CD.

That's my right.

Well, I remember at the time I was working for a music distributor.

And so to get a C with your friend's name on it, you know what I mean?

You're selling?

Oh, yeah.

Yeah, you're selling the stores.

That was a cool you know, something really cool.

Yeah.

And I was just kidding you about being modest, but you are fairly modest.

It's not like you were screaming from the top of the trees.

Hey, I just did a remix for My Life with the Thrill Kill Kult.

No, I don't know.

You can't.

You can't talk yourself up that way.

I think I made a caree of talking myself up that way.

Bill, I don't know.

You can.

You can do it.

But, you know, everybody has a different opinion.

About what?

About your work.

So it's best to just, you know, sort of let it speak for itself.

But I had a I had an actual band with the singer from Thrill Kill Kult too.

Oh.

Did you really what was the name of that Darling Candy did it.

Is there CDs out there?

Can I find the music online?

Well, what what happened was I was working.

There was a Darling Candy E that came before me, and it was.

It was just Frankie and William Tucker from Ministry.

Did Darling Candy with Frankie.

And then I'm sure you know, William Tucker passed away untimely in 1999.

And after that, Frankie didn't have a collaborator.

So we started working on material together.

All of a sudden we were writing an album together and I was like, wow, this is awesome.

And we just sort of like, stopped communicating as much after it got to a certain point.

I think we got a couple tracks that went out there.

We did a cover of Bowie's Rebel Rebel, and it was on a compilation album called Guest List, and it was really cool.

It came with a zine foreshadowing my later life.

Right.

And we also recorded a couple other tracks that came out, if you're familiar with the band Coil.

Yeah.

John Balance from Coil.

There was a tribute CD for John Balance.

Not necessarily Coil music, but bands that were inspired by John, and we were on that one too, with an original that was written by Frankie and William Tucker called Pain Game.

Were you playing instruments in this?

Yeah, I did all the music.

Wow.

Do you remember Ryan Clark?

Oh, yeah.

Ryan did guitar okay on those tracks, and I did everything else.

Frankie did the vocals.

Wow.

That's amazing.

I had no idea.

So you're playing synthesizer?

Yes, I was.

Most of it was just a computer wizardry.

Yeah, I get it.

Oh, and we were working on an album called Invasion of the Ultra Models.

It was going to be fantastic.

And then we just sort of, like didn't talk for a while, and I heard the new Thrill Kill Kult song that was called Invasion of the Ultra Models.

And I listened to it and I was like, this is the track that we wrote together.

Yeah.

So suddenly my contributions t that album had transferred over to the next Thrill Kill Kul album was called Death Threat.

Yeah, so I was on Death Threat too.

I did a lot on Death Threat, actually.

Yes.

Yeah.

Okay.

I was not as a songwriter, but yeah, as a band member.

Okay.

Because I remember, wasn't ther a time where we're Thrill Kill Kult broke up for a little while, and I'm assuming that's the time that maybe.

Okay, they never broke up.

Okay, okay.

Well, I remember seeing them with you at Metropol.

I mean, we saw them a couple of times together.

I forget where the other maybe the second club was, but at Metropol, where Lords of Acid had that amazing show with Grinder Girl and Flame.

You know, flame eaters, I mean, fire eaters.

It was just.

It was like nothing I'd ever seen before.

Yeah, that was it was like a carnival.

Yeah, it really was.

Instead of a concert.

That was incredible.

That was 95.

The Sextasy Ball.

That you are correct?

Yes.

Right.

Sexplosion, right?

Wasn't that the album?

Their album?

They had an album called Sexplosion.

Yeah that was a couple years older.

Oh, okay.

Well, Bill's making me look like, I don't know, my music.

Never.

Well, I remember th The Lords of Acid album, though.

That was the one with the Orange Devils.

Voodoo You.

That's right.

Yes.

Yeah, yeah.

Ruthie unfortunately passed away a couple of years ago.

I saw that.

Yeah, yeah.

So it's interesting that you've had this really sort of connection to the Chicago house industrial scen that was coming up at the time, and really gone on to influenc a lot of what's being done now electronically.

Yeah, I think so.

It was important not not necessaril my contribution, but the whole the whole genre in itself was very important.

As Trent Reznor proved.

I mean, he took i as far as it could possibly go at the tim and made it highly commercial.

Yeah, but before that, it's important to remember that it was not necessarily commercial.

Right?

These were not bands that were packing stadiums, nor should they have.

Right, right.

It was it was a more small scale, a more intimate experience.

It was only for certain people, sort of was the the allure.

And it wa it was really because of labels like Wax Tra and things like that that really promoted and built up the scene before bands like Nine Inch Nails, right?

Oh yeah.

Yeah.

I mean, they they took a lo of that stuff from other bands.

Everybody takes things from other people.

So.

Yeah.

And good for them.

Yeah.

Good for Trent.

So how did Groovy Doom come about?

Let's move on to that.

Groovy Doom.

It was a blog that I started in around like 2008.

Online?

Yeah.

Okay.

It was it was on blogspot, and I just started writing about movies, and I saw I read other people that were doing it, okay.

And I was like, I could do that too.

Like, what do they know?

I could start writing too, about movies.

So I just started my own.

And it just sort of, it just sort of sat there lik nobody really interacted with it that much And it was hard to promote it.

And I was like, well how do I even get this out there that I'm actually writing the blog in the first place?

So I started a Facebook page and I called it Groovy Doom two.

So we're was this the Facebook page came along around 2013.

Okay.

And it also didn't really do very much.

And then I had this sort of epiphany.

What I was interested in most of al was the history of these films.

My favorite films is how it started.

I was like, well, what did this movie?

I really love it.

When did it play Pittsburgh?

Like, when did I when could I have possibl seen it if I was old enough to go see it, which I wasn't.

But, you know, when was it here?

And I started looking up ads in online archives, and I started clipping them and saving them, and I suddenly I had like, I'd see a movie in the movie section.

I was like, oh, I need that one and that one and that one.

And suddenly I had this collection of like thousands of newsprint images, and I didn't really know.

I knew I was going to do something with them, but I started posting them on the Facebook page, and people loved that.

Like tha really got a lot of engagement.

And all of a sudden, like, things started picking up and I was like okay, this is a good direction.

But still there was something missing.

I was like, I have to do something with this because I truly do.

I'm very interested in those images.

I like looking at them.

I think they're very important.

Even this era of film marketing and it's gone now mainly.

Well, because newspapers are gone.

Right.

And what year are you talking about in terms of the films?

You're talking 50, 70, everything up until like the 1970s, the 1980s, early 90s, even, these were all, you know, things that I loved, and I didn't get to experience them in theaters.

So the ads were sort of a connection to it.

And plus, when I was a kid, that was how you connected with films like you didn't know tha there were there was a new movie coming out about killer children with black fingernails.

That was that fry people alive.

Like, you couldn't see that on TV and they didn't talk about it.

But there was an ad for it.

You were like, oh, what is that movie?

And were you looking through Pittsburgh newspaper?

So like The Press and those sort of things?

Yeah.

Wow.

Pittsburgh Press, my local paper was called the Valley News Dispatch, so I looked a lot in there, obviously.

And, you know, it was it was exciting.

They were dirty movies in there too, X-rated movies.

You'd see ads for them and you're like, this is a secret glimpse of the forbidde right there in your daily paper.

Isn't it funny that those ads would be there in whatever year you were looking at from the paper?

But now we wouldn' put ads to those sort of things.

My God, you know, would be hidden trouble, right?

Yeah.

I mean, you also wouldn't have a place like the garden today, right?

Like we did.

It was there.

There's no need for it.

Right.

Like nobody would go.

Right.

So it's the whole the whole experience has completely changed.

But anyway, I was like, interested in those ads.

And then I saw a friend of mine gave me a fanzine called Snack Bar Confidential, and it was an artist named Lance Laurie produced Snack Ba Confidential, and I looked at it and it was nothing but newsprint ads.

It was just like a simple folded booklet with xeroxed as.

And I was like, that's it.

That's what I have to do.

That's what I'm going to do with these ads is I'm just going to make a fanzin and it's going to be all about newsprint images, like that's all it's going to be.

That was my original vision for Drive in Asylum.

But of course, since I like to talk a lot and I was like, okay, maybe I'll just write a couple things about it.

So this is this, this is it.

That is it.

Yeah.

The actual fanzine Drive in Asylum.

Well, it's so interesting though, because as somebody who writes for a newspaper for a living, first of all, the fact that somebody's going back and looking through newspaper archives.

Thank you.

Right.

Because nobody does that anymore.

Right?

There are so many.

Right.

And looking at you and, you know I mean, these are transactional, what people assume are throwaway things.

Right.

An ad for a movi and ad for a CD, whatever else.

Right.

Like these are things that nobody expects people 30 years in the, in the future are actually going to care about.

Yeah.

It was it was just throw away.

It was disposable.

And but I think there really is artistry.

There is true artistry also contained in there.

So I, I just hated that nobody was looking at this stuff anymore.

So I collected it.

I put it out there, I'm like, well if people are interested in it.

And they were happily, yeah.

It seems like you're also sort of cataloging a history of Pittsburgh.

Yeah.

You know, not only Pittsburgh, it's ads from everywhere.

Okay.

But I mean, for the show specifically, you know, it seems like if you're looking through these ads or these newspapers and pulling ads, it sort of tells the history of film, right?

In Pittsburgh or or at least, you know, around the region or the world, whatever.

But you really get a history is what you're creating.

So it's going from being a fan and being about something that's kitschy.

And all of a sudden you're a historian, right?

Yeah, yeah.

Before Wikipedia.

Yeah.

Yeah actually I didn't expect that.

Like, I didn't reall that's not what I set out to do.

But I'm happ that that I ended up doing that because now that's more important to me.

How does this mesh with Gen-X?

I think because of the time frame specifically.

Like I think a lot of people in Gen-X grew up looking in the newspaper for ads, obviously, because to see what movies you wanted to go see, we all like to go int the movies, no matter what kind you wanted to see.

And that was how you you learned about what was playing some things.

Other things were on TV, you know, like the big movies you saw that was on Evening Magazine and Entertainment Tonight.

Right, right.

You could hear about the new Alien sequel that's coming out.

That wasn't a secret.

But there were there were many, many more films that were it was purely exploitative for the most part, exploitation films.

Right.

And that in itself.

Why do you look at him when you say that?

Did I say a bad word?

I don't think so.

No.

Exploitation.

Exploitation.

You know, it's it's the exploitation of the the public's interest in this type of material rather than, you know, the actors were probably exploited, too, because a lot of these people, as I'm finding, you know, as I started interviewing more and more actors, I found out that a lot of these people that acted in films in the 70s and even before, they didn't get paid for some of this stuff, or they got paid very, very little.

And then the movie ended up going on and making millions.

So that's a little bit o a bummer to hear that it really, truly was exploitative.

Someone got rich off of those movies and it was not the people that actually made them.

Sometimes it wasn't even the director.

Right.

Right.

Well, so I used to work for a movie distribution company, and we used to get.

Yeah it was called Baker and Taylor, and we used to get they would reissue these, these movies, you know, you'd get, like, I'm not even sure what studio, but a studio would buy a whole bunch of these exploitation films and then they would put them out unde whatever banner they were doing.

Right.

So, like blaxploitation or Asian?

Right.

And and and you're right, the movies had either falle into public domain or there was nobody left to sort o have control over them anymore.

So now the studio that was putting them out was making a lot of money, and nobody else related to the film was.

Sure.

And I think that's an interesting period of time where, you know, we're pas the studio system in Hollywood, but we're now we're there' these films that are being made that aren't being sort of made for the masses.

They're being made for one particular typ of audience, whether that's like schlocky horror or whether that is kung fu or whatever else.

Right.

And and they become classics in the 80s to our age.

People, I don't know how, but all of a sudden, whether it's late night, like local television station are playing them late at night after, right, or whatever else home video to, I mean, home video and late late night TV cemented a lot of these films as cult movies because, you know, it was it was much more limited.

Now you can instantly call up almost anything.

It could never happen that way again, right?

But at the time there was only limited material to work with, and there weren't that many movies out there that could have been marketed this way.

So a lot of times what the distributors would do is they would change the name of the movie, and that's another.

That's another.

It really turns me on, actually.

I love finding a movie that I'm like, what the hell kind of movie is?

What is that movie?

And then I researched it.

I'm like, oh, it's this movie with a new title.

Yeah, and I really dig that.

I love finding the most obscure titles for films like, there was a movie called Messiah of Evil.

It's one of my favorites, and this is probably the best story that I can come up with about retitling movies.

It was made in 71 by Willard Willard Hayek, who made Howard the Duck?

Yes.

Yeah.

You may remembe Willard Hayek and Gloria Katz.

They were a creative team together, and they actually co-wrote American Graffiti for George Lucas, and which explains the George Lucas connection.

Well, before that, they were they were just art students making movies.

And they were like well, let's make a horror movie and let's see if we can sell it.

And they made Messiah of Evil highly recommended.

You should absolutely check it out.

And they ran out of money at some point, like the crew and the cast started to realize that not no one was writing checks for this film.

The checks that they were writing were like bouncing or like all the invoices were shoved in a drawer somewhere and no one was going to get paid.

So everybody got spooked an they bolted from the production.

It just ground to a halt.

So.

The film just sort of stalled and they hadn't shot the ending of the movie.

They they had a little bit of a, of a more exciting ending and they only filmed part of it.

Well, a couple years later, a distributor purchased it.

Even though the movie was unfinished, a distributor bought it, recut it.

So that sort of like got around the missing ending and put it out as Messiah of Evil 74 is when that movie came ou and it played as Messiah of Evil for a couple of years and then it just sort of didn't do anything.

It just sort of fell off the face of the earth and okay, okay, whatever.

But then another distributo bought it and decided they were this was in 70, 70, 78.

Oh, it was 78 because Dawn o the dead was just about to come.

Oh, okay.

It's sort of a zombie movie.

Messiah of Evil.

It's it's not really but there are elements of Night of the Living Dead in it, and they jus got the idea they're like, well, why don't we call this Return of the Living Dead?

Oh, and they put it out.

They totally copied the ad, like that iconic lettering for Night of the Living Dead.

They just wrote out Return of the Living Dead.

And not only that, Dawn.

Everyone calls Dawn a 1978 movie.

It did not play the States until 79.

It.

You didn't see Dawn in 7 unless you lived in Italy.

So.

Or you knew George Romero.

So in 79 was the projected US release for Dawn.

Well, this distributor picked up on that.

They stole the tagline.

When there's no more room in hell, the dead will walk the earth.

And they actually put it out like that.

And as if daring to be sued and they were, wow.

They were totally sued.

And the movie played a couple of months as Return of the Living Dead.

And then it got stopped in Chicago.

Richard Rubinstein put an injunction on them and stop them from using it.

They had to change the title of the movie.

There were two different titles it picked up after that, Revenge of the Screaming Dead, and the other one Night of the Damned.

It was called Night of the Damned, and that' not even the end of the story.

After that, it changed titles again.

In 1981, they put it out again under the title Dead People, and that was sort of like the end of the theatrical titles.

There were more titles on home video.

That's a whole other marke where distributors got out there and starte just repackaging these movies.

Wow.

So.

Oh, no.

Go ahead.

Can you give us a definitio of a horror film, a cult film?

Like, what's the difference between those and a mainstream film?

I couldn't tell you.

Okay.

It's because it means something different to everybody.

Okay.

To me, a cult film is any movie that has a whole bunch of people that like it.

You know, obviously that's the obvious reference like the cult of Star Wars or.

But.

Okay, okay.

That's a little bit of that's a huge mainstream example.

There are other cult movies like that were obscure ish, at least for a while Most of them have been exploited now and sold over and over again like Pink Flamingos.

Right?

John Waters notorious film that was a movie that you probably didn't know what that wa unless you were subjected to it at some point and you had wandered into a theater to see, let's go see what this is about.

And then you were visually assaulted by image that you couldn't even imagine you were going to see in this movie, and that turned into a cult film.

Yeah, that's that's a really good example of a cult film and John Waters movies, by the way.

Of course, they're they're brilliant.

Even though they were mad for about it looks like $0.10.

It was a little bit more than that.

But he was just a very creative individual who knew how to make a movie like that, even though he didn't have any money or even any expertise.

So that's another kind of cult film.

And then there's.

What wa the other thing that you asked horror film.

Is that just a scary movie or like psychological and gory or like?

There are different kind of definitions for horror films.

Everyone has their own idea of what's a horror film, so that's a little bit harder to define.

I would say it would hav to be a movie that it seems like the intention was to frighten and disturb the people.

There's usually some kind of fantasy element to it.

Okay, but then there's maybe is Pycho, a horror film?

I mean, it's not there's nothing supernatural that happens.

And, you know, it's just shocking, right?

Well, so I'm intereste in the fact that you are sort of cataloging this period where I don't know if people realize it or not, but, you know, somebody like John Waters, right?

Is very controversial.

Is very underground.

Not really a lot of people know about him.

And then whatever it is, 20 or 30 years later, all of a sudden there' a Broadway show for one of his.

Right Or the same with music, right?

Like, you know, a band like My Life with the Thrill Kill Kult, and I'm just using them as an example, you know, in 1990, whatever.

It's sort of underground music.

And now you hear it on commercials, right?

And I don't know i a lot of people, especially now, make the connection of what an influence some of these things were.

And no one's really keeping track of them except people like you.

I mean, there's there's other people who are doing this for music and doing it for television, doing it for whatever else.

But you're really doing a servic by sort of cataloging this movie cult business tha a lot of people aren't familiar with, but know the after effect, if that makes sense.

Yeah.

I mean, on some level, people who write about movies, we are all journalists.

If we're writing abou the problem is anybody can do it and people start doing it and they're not accurate.

Like they're they're not actually they don't actually know what they're talking about sometimes.

But just the fact that somebody talking about it is enough to keep a films interest alive.

And I think that's that's very important.

I think that's one of the reasons why now all these movies are still bouncing around our collective consciousness is because they were just too weird or good or funny or scary to forget by by some people.

And those people kept talking about it, and they and they kept the movie's legend alive.

What I find heartening is that for people who don't know, this might sound like a very niche sort of thing that you're doing.

But when we knew you were going to be on the show, my wife Kim and I were looking up, you know, your web pages and things like that.

You have hundreds of thousands of followers.

This isn't a just some sort of, like, little its, you know, this isn't just you don't have ten people in a basement who are still putting i VHS tapes before they go to bed.

There's a lot of people interested.

Most of them are putting VHS tapes before they go to bed.

Yeah.

It's great.

I mean, it's nice to have people that you connect with.

The actual core following of what I do.

I have a weekly live strea with with my co-host Sam Panico.

We do a show called The Drive In Asylum Double Feature, and we have an audience of anywhere from like, 40 to 60 people every week that watch us.

And that's not a lot of people, but it's enough for us.

Yeah Because it's it's a community.

And there are people who interact not only with us, but with each other through the show.

And that's important too.

It's like it's not necessarily it's not about us, and it's not about the people who are actually doing the reporting, if you will.

It's about the experience of the people who are intereste in it, and finding other people to have their own discussions and have their own ideas.

Why don't we take a quick break?

We'll let you drink some water and we'll catch our breath here, and we'll be right back.

What is the Gen X Pittsburgh cast?

Let me take you back.

Remember when coffee was king and bagels rolled on the corner of 14th and Carson at the Beehive?

Or how about that tim you stumbled upon art all night?

How cool was that?

Or when your evening started instead of ended at 10 p.m.?

Yeah, we miss those days, too.

So we're bringing them back.

One Gen-X story at a time.

Joining David Rullo and I, Valerie Christoffel, as we sit down with the movers and shakers, the artists and the voices who helped shape Pittsburgh back in the early 90s.

Subscribe to the Pittsburgh podcast.

Welcome back to Gen X Pittsburgh We are here with Bill Van Ryn and we have a couple more questions for you.

David go ahead.

Yeah.

So, Bill, I remember back in the day used to make these fabulous mixtapes, right.

And they were not just, when people think of mixtapes, A lot of times they think of, well, I sat with my boombox and recorded songs off the radio, but these were really clever.

At leas the ones that you made for me.

You know, it would be Boy George coverin a George Harrison song or or The Dead or Aliv doing some sort of weird cover.

I remember before anybody knew they were.

You had some sort of.

I think it was Manic Stree Preachers doing Suicide Solution on o one of the tapes.

Right.

Yeah.

So you really spent a lot of time curating these tapes, and I remember and I could be wrong, but you had like a catalog of all of the tapes that you made.

Is that right?

I had a notebook.

And whenever I made somebody a tape, I would write down because I didn't want to send another mix tape to that person with the same songs on it.

So and I can't remember off the top of my head.

So do you still have these?

I don't have that notebook anymore.

Do you still have, like, the like the recordings?

Like, can we buy them from.

You know they were all completely unique.

So.

So unfortunately, I was going to ask you if you could remake me that thing I know.

Sorry.

Or if you could at least tell me.

Because I'm certain that I can't find Boy George covering My Sweet Lord on Spotify, so you probably can't.

Yeah, I'm sure it's out there.

I mean, it's just you really do what we're talking about movies.

We're talking about music.

But you really do have sort of a collector's mind for for pop culture.

Yeah, there's a certain thing I'm obsessed with I can't stop.

Yeah.

What is your favorite horror film?

Oh, I wish you would have told me.

This is so hard.

It's so difficult.

Well, probably the movie that I've seen the most is Alien, which I would consider it a horror movie.

I know it's science fiction, but it was just Alien Day yesterday, I think April 26th.

Yeah, I didn't.

That is not what I expected to come from you.

I know it's a little mainstream.

Yeah, yeah, very mainstream.

I've seen it so many times and I think it's just a perfect film.

I just did a podcast about it, I guested on somebody else's, and I couldn't say enough about it.

The host barely got to say anything because I was just, you know, I could just talk forever about Alien.

That's a that's a favorite one.

Texas Chainsaw Massacre is another one.

Okay.

A perfect film and Messiah of Evil, which I already mentioned.

Okay.

There's so many.

For somebody like me that is scared to watch anything horror like that, give me something that I can, like, be under my covers with one eye watching.

Give me something that's going to, like, freak me out because I'm going to do it.

I'm going to do it.

Somethin that's going to freak you out.

That's like crazy.

Okay.

Ive had a couple of ideas for you.

The first one would be a movie called Blood and Lace, which is from 1971.

There are many peopl and their familiar faces in it.

Vic Tayback is in it.

Okay.

From.

From Alice.

Gloria Graham.

If you know who she is, she is probably most recognizable as Violet Bick from It's a Wonderful Life.

Yeah.

Oh my God.

She's she's in that film.

And Melody Patterson, who was in on F Troop back in the day.

If you see.

Yes, there it is.

Oh.

Can I change my favorite movie to Blood and Lace?

Oh my God.

Really?

Okay.

Blood and Lace.

It's it's a it's a PG rated film.

It is the sickest PG rated movie I can't believe.

I mean, PG used to be a lo more broad right than it is now.

You know, a PG film in today's climate is very mild, right?

Because now we have PG 13.

Right.

Right.

But Blood and Lace just has unbelievable themes in it.

It's not even really things that happen on screen.

It's just the story is so bizarre and sick.

Another good one that I would recommend is Don't Look in the basement.

Oh my God.

No way.

Nope.

Can't do that one.

Nope.

Alrighty.

Nope, not going to happen.

Oh, no.

It's it's really not that scary.

It's just more of, like it's about an isolated, insane asylum.

And the things that that go on there and the people that inhabit this place and how things may not be as they seem.

Highly recommended.

Okay.

On another note, what kind of music do you listen to these days?

Oh.

Just everything.

I mean, I mean, that's a really generic thing to say, but there are many genres that I'm interested in.

Right now, most of what you would hear me listening to would be glam rock.

Like from the, from the early 70s.

So British glam rock not necessarily know just, you know, there's a certain kind of like grungy sound that some of the glam rock act had like that I'm really into.

Like the Troggs went glam rock for a little while.

Yeah, I really love the Troggs.

I mean, I can't get enough of the Troggs, but especially their glam phase.

What else have I been listening to lately?

It's not the stuff that you would think.

Let's just say that like the stuff that I'm best known for.

Are you listening to vinyl or CDs?

I listen to both.

Well, I don't listen to CDs.

I hardly ever play my CDs.

I do play vinyl a lot, but a lot of a lot of the music that I listened to is just digital.

Okay.

It's it's my own digital library, by the way.

It's things that I've ripped right from vinyl, so it's not quite so bad.

Yeah.

Do you still write music?

No, I haven't written anything in a long time.

I just moved on to other things, and now it's all.

I don't have time.

But I've had ideas and I've ha tracks that I've wanted to put.

Some things I do do for for our show.

I create things for our show.

I haven't, like, written a song per se for it, but I put together audio collage for the background on our show.

Do you still use Acid for that or?

No.

There's better things now.

I mean, I still use Aci depending on what the depending on where you're going.

How long you're going to be there.

Yeah.

And what do we have to look forward to in the future with you?

There's a new issue of Drive In Asylum that's going to drop.

Okay.

How do we get that?

I sell it on Etsy.

Okay The shop is called Groovy Doom.

Surprise, surprise.

And you can also buy it.

If you're in New York you can go to Forbidden Planet.

They stock Drive In Asylum.

There's a place in the UK.

I don't know how wide reaching your audience is but they're called Strange Vice.

They stock Drive In Asylum, you can buy it from them on eBay as well.

They sell it on eBay, I don't.

I was looking at our stats and only like 90% of our audience is United States based.

So we're looking for 3% Malaysia, right?

All right.

David, are you ready for some?

I am.

Some questions.

Yep.

All right.

The Rapid Fire Rewind.

Okay.

This is very simple.

It's the simplest thing you've done all day.

We're going to ask you a question and you just have to answer it.

Okay.

Different than what you've been doing the whole show.

Yeah.

Yeah, Im wondering what the difference is.

All right.

You ready?

Iron City or Rolling Rock?

Rolling rock.

Okay.

All day.

All right.

What's your favorite alternative band?

The Cure.

Okay.

Three rivers or Heinz field?

Three Rivers.

Okay.

Your favorite Gen X movie?

So that could be of any genre.

16 Candles.

Really?

It's disgusting.

I know, I love it, too.

It is.

It's problematic, but all of the I was not expecting that answer at all.

Well, I don't know.

I was I was thinking you know, Gen X people think of.

Great.

That's great.

Turner's or Schneider's?

Turner's.

Okay.

Favorite Saturday morning cartoon?

Wow.

I haven't though about that one for a long time.

Most people haven't.

That's why I'm here.

That's what keeps this podcast in business.

You know, I was really into the weird [...] like planet, Gilligan's Island, Gilligan's Planet, and the I Dream of Jeannie cartoon to be really into the weird [...] Can I say that?

Sure.

Probably the most.

I used to watch Super Friends.

Sure.

Okay.

Go to.

Okay.

Donzi's and Chaunceys or Metropol and Rosebud?

Metropol and Rosebud.

No, really.

First concert?

You're gonna out me on this.

Well, the very first rock concert that I ever saw was the Christian rock group Petra.

Wow.

I remember Petra.

Yep yep yep.

They did a cover of God Gave Rock and Roll to Me.

They did.

Yes, I heard them do it for real.

Wow.

Yeah, that's the first.

That's amazing.

Mine was Sha Na Na.

So, you know.

Oh my God.

My dad took me.

Where did you see them?

Canton, Ohio.

I love Sha Na Na.

I used to watch.

I know.

I watched that show all that time.

Yeah.

My favorite was the chubby guy.

It's always the chubby guy.

Bowzer was.

Was like, you know, I don't know.

Anyways, I have one more question.

Southside Beehive or Oakland Beehive?

Southside Beehive.

Yeah.

Atari or Nintendo?

Atari.

And then we actually have a bonus question for you.

No one else has been asked this question.

Oh, pet Shop Boys or M Life with the Thrill Kill Kult?

My Life with the Thrill Kill Kult.

Wow.

I didn't know if I expected that.

Sorry.

Wow.

Its all good.

Well, Bill, thank you so much for joining us.

I've learned a lot.

I have some scary films to watch.

I'm so excited.

But thank you so muc for being here with us tonight.

Thanks a lot for having me.

As always, Bill its fabulous to see you.

Yes.

Thank you.

And thank you for joining us.

We'll see you guys next week.

The Gen X Pittsburgh Podcast hosts are David Rullo and Valerie Christofel, executive producer David Rullo, producer and graphic designer Kim Rullo, producer Valerie Christofel, video production and editor.

Brent Isaac, music by NeoStem.