[lounge music] ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ - The best response you can have to a payoff in a thriller is someone goes, "Oh, right, I forgot, of course..." [multiple voices chattering] [Narrator] On Story offers a look inside the creative process from today's leading writers, creators, and filmmakers.

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[waves] [kids screaming] [wind] [witch cackling] [sirens wail] [gunshots] [dripping] [suspenseful music] [telegraph beeping, typing] [piano gliss] From Austin Film Festival, this is On Story.

A look inside the creative process from today's leading writers, creators, and filmmakers.

This week's On Story, "American Horror Story: Roanoke" writer/producer Akela Cooper and "Blood Fest" writer/director Owen Egerton.

- You know, one of the things I love about horror and comedy is they are the two genres that desire, thrive on an audio response, an audible response from an audience.

An uncontrolled, audible response from an audience.

It's a laugh or it's a scream.

And they're both similar.

That's why horror and comedy are so fun to watch with a crowd.

Because we all, I mean, we all scream at the same time.

[paper crumples] [typing] [Narrator] In this episode, horror writers Akela Cooper and Owen Egerton discuss their love for the genre, setups and payoffs, emotional scares, and inspirational moments from classic horror films.

[typewriter ding] - I was reminded recently of, like a 12th century poem that Scott Frank quotes in "Godless" on Netflix, which is not horror, but kind of... That opens, "'Tis a fearful thing to love what death can touch."

And I'm curious as people and as writers, what fearful things resonate with you, and in horror, and specifically with your characters.

- Interesting enough, I'm always fascinated in film and in novels and stories, overall, when one person's expectation of how the world, or an event, or relationship is, meets up with the actuality of what it really is.

Like, "I think the world is just."

And then you meet the reality that it's not just.

Or, "I think my spouse is faithful."

And then not.

Or even just sort of the strange belief, "I'm immortal."

So I think when my beliefs are shattered in every kind of way, that was what terrifies me the most.

And I think with those scares, with those fears for me, they don't have answers.

It's not like you're like, "And then at the end we realize it's okay."

No, being alive is scary, and being in love with the world is terrifying because it's all very fragile.

It can be ripped away from you.

- I think for me, a lot of my horror comes from the fact that I am a Black woman in the world.

And it's a lot of, it's like, body horror.

Like having something inside me that I am unable to control.

And I did not invite in, or even, my personal space, i.e.

my home.

That is constantly terrifying to me.

It's like, I recently just moved, and I had to get a security system for the first time.

It's like listening to another woman down the street, like, her home invasion, which was very quick, but like, it was captured on camera.

And she was showing it to me, and it's like, they just broke the windows and came in, and it was a smash and grab.

And I'm just like, "Oh God, this was down the street from me.

This was down the street from me.

What's gonna happen to me?"

And then like, you know, planting various blunt objects around my house, just in case I have to like grab something.

I am a very like, personal.

It's like, I have my space, do not invade my space unless I invite you in.

So those are the kind of horrors that keep me up at night.

- A college, you know, privileged fraternity kid being pulled over by the cops could be a comedy scene.

But if it's an African-American, it takes on a whole other context of horror, potentially.

Unfortunately, because of the real world we live in.

And that there's so many situations, circumstances right now.

And it's interesting to see some of this beginning to be tackled more directly in genre and film that are more mindful of those distinctions of race and class when it comes to different situations that can really jump entire genres.

And I'm curious as sort of observers, consumers of the medium and the genre, but also as writers in the thick of it, what you've observed and what your instincts are.

- Well, for me, just like as a Black horror writer, "Get Out" was a revelation.

Because like, I finally had a movie that I could point to when I am pitching my own things to producers, it's like, "See?

We can make money, like telling our stories and acting in our stories.

So stop telling me I can't."

But it's also, it's like, I just noticed a personal change after "Get Out" came that like, even a lot of the white studio producers were like, "So your horror is gonna speak to a social commentary, right, right?"

[Owen laughs] - Horror has always had the ability to kind of be our nightmares that we have as a culture, right?

And our dreams that we have as a culture.

So we're like what's going on in our world and it's gonna get all mixed up.

It's just like, when you go to sleep and you're like, "Oh, they're all the elements from your daily life.

Like, there's your gym coach from ninth grade.

And there's that girl that you never had the guts to talk to in college.

But they're all hanging out at the same coffee shop where your father died."

All these things in one place, and they don't, you don't really kind of make sense of it.

And I think horror can be like that.

Horror has all the elements that are going on in our day to day, whether it's, you know, gun violence, whether it's no longer trusting the American system that we were taught to trust, or whether it's seeing the, you know disparity in wealth.

And those things kind of mingle together in our stories that we're writing.

- I would like to kind of travel back in time to when you were staying up late under the covers, reading a book or a comic, or sneaking into a movie you shouldn't have seen when you were too young.

What was sort of your gateway drug to horror and genre that helped form you and spark your imagination and passion for it?

- My mom is gonna kill me for this.

But like, my introduction to horror was pretty much my brother and sister.

I grew up on a farm in southeastern Missouri.

So my brother and sister were essentially my free babysitters.

And my sister was 10 years older than me.

And she loved watching horror movies.

So I remember her putting on like, "A Nightmare on Elm Street," "Hellraiser II" was a particular favorite.

My very first request was "Pumpkinhead" which was directed by Stan Winston.

When it came out, it was put in just like, dollar theaters across the country.

My parents saw it.

They came home raving about it.

My brother and his friend wanted to go see it.

And my parents were like, "Sure!"

And I was seven years old.

[Owen laughs] And I'm like, "Ooh, ooh, I wanna go to, 'cause you keep saying how good this movie is."

And my parents is like, [exaggerated laughter] "[Bleep] you, no."

[audience laughs] So they take me, and they drop me off at my grandma's house, and they're pulling away.

And I'm like in the doorway, just like...

Car stops, backs up.

My brother gets out, comes back to the door, and he's like, "Come on."

And so years later, I asked my mom, I was like, "Why did you turn the car around?"

And she said, "Because I looked back and you looked so sad.

It broke my heart."

And joke was on her, because if you've seen "Pumpkinhead," you know 10 minutes into that movie, [bleep] hits the fan.

And I was on her lap.

So my first impression of "Pumpkinhead" was my mom's armpit.

- Why doesn't daddy let the man in?

- He can't, buddy.

He just can't.

[eerie music] - Get away from my door.

Get away from me and my family.

- Please!

[sobbing] You gotta help me, Tom.

It's coming!

I didn't kill that girl.

- I don't know nothing about that, and I don't want to.

- They said I did, Tom, but I didn't.

[lightning crackles] - Now, I'm sorry, I am.

But I can't risk my family for you, Clayton.

I got my shot gun here.

Get away.

Get away before I have to use it.

[lightning crackles] - It was thrilling to me in a very addictive way.

"Pumpkinhead" was pretty much the needle into the arm that got me like truly into horror.

- Wow.

[laughs] My kids are a little older now, but I am gonna try and take them to "Pumpkinhead."

It's a delightful Thanksgiving story.

- Where a child dies.

- Where a child dies, yeah.

Ooh, so for me- - Spoiler.

- For me, it was like, you know, I grew up in the 80s with video stores.

So I would go to the video store, the local, it wasn't even a Blockbuster.

It was just like, you know, the crappy little video store.

And I would read the back covers of every different horror movie.

I was like, "What is this, "Chopping Mall?"

What!?"

And the covers were all amazing.

And that amazed me, Then they would come on TV, but I remember a few specific things that really like, "Oh my God, this is amazing."

One of them was watching late night television, where I think my family had gone to this cabin.

So my parents were in a loft upstairs and everyone else is going to sleep.

And I stayed up late and watched "Night of the Living Dead," the original.

And I was watching this and I was like, "Okay, kind of corny, and kind of black and white, woah my God, they're eating flesh."

And I was a little kid and I was terrified.

And if you remember the basement scene, where the mother is murdered with the dead daughter using the, oh my God, I was just killing me.

[screaming] [suspenseful music] - Karen?

Karen?

Karen.

Oh, baby.

Baby.

[gasps] [wailing] [screams] - And I remember thinking, "I'm not allowed to watch this.

I'm not allowed to watch this."

But I loved it, and I couldn't turn off.

When it did turn it off, I was laying there, you know, in the living room under a blanket.

I was like, I'm just hearing the moaning, and hearing the sounds of moaning of the zombies.

I'm not gonna be able to sleep.

I realized that was actually my parents making love in the loft [all laughing] above, and sorry, my daughter's here.

So she's learned something about her grandparents.

[all laugh] But I think the combination of all those, like, horror!

In so many ways!

[typewriter ding] - Owen, of course, you work in comedy and I wanna talk kind of about engineering in the horror genre and that there are similarities to comedy in terms of setups and payoffs.

- Most certainly, yeah.

- Of kind of tension and release.

And I'm wondering if you can speak to how you approach kind of, that nuts and bolts kind of mechanics of the genre.

- You know, one of the things I love about horror and comedy is they are the two genres that desire, thrive on an audio response, an audible response from an audience, an uncontrolled audible response from an audience.

It's a laugh, or it's a scream.

And they're both similar.

That's why horror and comedy are so fun to watch with a crowd.

Because we all, I mean, we all scream at the same time.

A joke is very much of like a setup, set up an expectation, and then that expectation is subverted.

And that's how jokes work.

And we love them for that.

And a jump scare is very similar in the same way of like, setting up an expectation of what's gonna be behind that door.

But then, you know, James Wan grabs you in the face.

And, you know, it's set up and expectation.

And they're both like, using the time, using the steps, they are orchestrated, they are put together.

If done well, they're put together like a puzzle, a really finely pieced puzzle.

Especially, even when you're filming it.

And working, you know with Blumhouse, and Atomic Monster, same way of like, these folks have had a lot of experience in jump scares and how to orchestrate those kind of scares.

How to make sure there's emotion in them and not just a cat jumping at your face.

And though, that would be a great, I don't think cats are scary.

- When I'm writing it's usually, it's like, I'm not necessarily thinking about like, the jump scare, the construction.

'Cause I know it's like, yes, once the director takes this, they're gonna make it their own thing, and they might tweak something or change something.

I'm usually like, on the page it's like, I know the buildup is what I focus on.

And one of my favorite things now is that we're all, like I recently watched "Scream" again, and I was Instagramming.

It's like, "Ah, the birth of self-aware horror."

So like on the page now I'm just like, "The attic door suddenly comes open and the ladder comes down, and she's looking up."

And it was like, "Do not go in there.

She goes in there."

[Owen laughs] - [bleep] [tense music] [door clatters] [bashing on door] [tense music] [door slams] [tense music] [door slams] [tense music] [banging on door] [tense music] - Help me, somebody!

Help me!

- And so I know a director is going to do something wonderful with that construction.

Like, I don't necessarily have to be like, "Oh, here comes the jump scare" as I'm writing.

- Right, yeah.

- That sets up the next question perfectly, which is how, horror I think in particular is wrapped up in the context of its own genre, at least as much as any other genre, in terms of knowing that the audience is conditioned with a certain set of expectations and a framework of awareness of what the rules of the genre are.

And so how do you kind of both be aware of that, but find a fresh approach when for example, one of the tropes is characters making stupid choices.

How mindful of you are, of everything that's come before you and been done in the genre and trying to find new ways and/or new approaches to subvert those expectations the audience has been conditioned to?

- The horror community is so fun.

And I think it's one of the things I love about horror.

I love the idea that we can talk about "Pumpkinhead," and everyone's like, "Oh yeah!"

Like, we have this sort of love of the genre.

And as Cargill likes to say, who wrote "Sinister" and "Doctor Strange," you know, he likes to talk about like, horror ages so well, too.

You know, bad movies become cheesy and charming, and good movies become classics.

Like, just give it 10 years and all of a sudden, a throw-away horror movie is like, "Aw, but it's so good."

And I think that's great, because we do have this working vocabulary that we all know.

So there are things that we can like, "Oh yeah, we know this.

We know what that means.

We know that that little kid's gonna kill somebody!"

We know these things.

I think the key is, for me, is like, I am a fan of the uncanny.

When something happens in a film, yeah?

Like, you know, thinking about "Phantasm," and you know, a finger alone, like, squirreling around.

It's like, that finger's not gonna get me.

There's nothing scary about the finger.

I'm not threatened by the finger.

I'm upset by the finger.

'Cause it doesn't, it shouldn't be moving.

[laughs] It's uncanny.

And the uncanny, when the uncanny happens in horror, it's particularly beautiful.

It's something different.

It doesn't necessarily make you scream, maybe it's a set up for a scream.

But it makes you feel the world is not as it should be.

And that feeling of the world not being as it should be is a key aspect of living, and a key aspect of horror.

And so for me, that's a constant rediscovery of like, "Okay, what does it mean?"

I mean, the slashers that I grew up in did a great job of dismantling what I thought was a safe world.

Like, the world's safe, suburbia's safe.

Oh no, Michael Myers comes to suburbia.

Summer camp, now that's safe.

Oh [bleep], no it's not.

[all chuckle] How about dolls?

Like, talking dolls.

Nope, they're not.

All right, my dreams.

At least in my dreams I'm-- oh my God.

[all laugh] So there's like, how do we go to the places that we have an expectation of the world, a relationship, a situation, and how do we twist it so its uncanniness is revealed?

And that uncanniness, I think that's where you find the horror and maybe the dread.

- Same, I am also a fan of the uncanny.

One of my, the scariest things I've ever seen is actually not even in a movie, it's the screen test that they did with Javier Botet for Mama.

- Mama.

Oh my God!

- And it's just, it's crew on a sound stage.

He's in the costume, just doing the movement, and it's kind of in black and white.

It is unnerving just watching it.

And again, there are crew all around and it should be, it's like, "Oh, okay.

Doing a screen test."

It's just like, "Oh no, no."

Because his movements are so unnatural.

And he did a very good job in that movie.

To your question, it's like, it's difficult now, 'cause we all know this with a lot of horror movies, like, technology is the problem.

But I tend to kind of like, okay, it's like, we know what the issue is.

How can we subvert it?

How can we challenge it?

So you have a situation where a character is like, near an elevator door, and there's like a dark door in the hallway.

Something is like, breathing inside.

Just go to the elevator.

Turns around elevator needs a key.

Where is the key?

It's in front of that door.

Now, you have that character book it.

And is he gonna get to the elevator key before whatever's in that dark doorway comes out?

That's the kind of stuff that I like to do with horror.

it's like, we know the situation, now just challenge the character.

[typewriter dings] - It all comes down to being invested and caring about that character.

Identifying with them, what they're going through to have that connection and for all these scares and moments to really resonate with an audience.

How do you go about sort of creating, crafting, engineering that, and what are some examples in films, either recent or in the past that you have particularly connected with the characters of in horror and why do you think that was?

- Yeah, I did this podcast called The Horror with my former writing partner, Russell Sharman.

Russell Sharman does not like horror movies.

So he said, "Challenge me to watch a horror movie every two weeks.

And then I will tell you why it's bad, and you can tell me why you think it's good."

So we do this, and it's really fun.

And I found out that he just doesn't like being scared.

Which I thought, like, "Yeah you do, everyone does."

Well, it turns out, some people don't.

But we watched "Friday the 13th, Part IV, The Final Chapter," 'cause I thought it was the most Friday the 13th-y of those films.

And in that one, you know, Crispin Glover's in it.

And he's having, there's teenagers, and they're skinny dipping, all this.

And it was all the fun stuff.

And I was like, "Oh, it's interesting the sort of general idea in culture is like, it's the morality play.

Like if the teenagers have sex, the slasher goes to kill them."

But I was watching it again.

I was like, "No, no, they're having a blast.

Everyone's having a good time."

The mom with her kids are having fun.

People are caring about each other.

And I was like, "Oh!"

It sparked a revelation for me of like, you've gotta have as much life as death in your horror movie.

You have to have as much life as you do death.

That means people who are honestly caring about each other.

That means people who are striving for something in their life, not just survival.

And that, for me, it was like, oh, that was a revelation.

- I would say there are a couple.

The first one that comes to mind is "Paranormal Activity" that goes to the personal space.

And also the like, what happens when you're sleeping, when you're at your most vulnerable?

And it's like, "Would I want a camera?

No, I don't.

No, for various reasons.

But it's like, yeah, I don't need to know.

if something is like sneaking around, you know, a specter, you can just, don't bother me, I'll be fine.

Another one, which also goes to personal space, is "The Guest."

Which, if you haven't seen that movie, is an amazing movie.

Again, you invite someone into your home, treat them well, and then spoiler alert, they turn on you and start killing you.

So it's stuff like that.

And then the last one that really affected me, just because of like, it just inspired so many debates among me and my friends was "It Follows."

Because for most of us, like, we either remember what it was like to be a stupid horny teenager, or we're there.

And so it's like... [laughing] - Did you just point to my daughter?

- I did not!

I don't know where your daughter is!

- My gosh!

- I'm sure she's so glad she's here.

[laughing] - But yeah, it's like, I really invested in those characters, and like, her plight is just like, "Oh my God, how do you get rid of like a demon STD?

That sucks."

And then like, after the movie we were like, "You know what I would do, I would fly to Australia, have sex with someone in Australia, and see how long it would take.

It was just, it was like those kinds of things.

But it's like, it had been a long time since after the movie, we were just having drinks, and like, having an intense debate about like, the logic of the movie and what we would do if we were in that situation which means we connected with those characters.

[suspenseful music] [Jay] Oh my God.

It just walked in the room.

It's right there.

[Paul] It's here?

[Jay] Right there!

[Girl] Jay, what do you see?

[Jay] I don't wanna tell you.

[Paul] Jay?

I need you to point at, okay?

Keep your finger aimed at it so we can see where it is.

Is it getting in the water?

[Jay] It's just standing there staring at me.

It's moving.

[Girl] What's it doing?

[Jay] It's walking, it's just walking.

Paul, I wanna get out.

[Paul] No, just wait for it to get in.

[Jay] No, I don't wanna do this.

I just wanna get out!

[Paul] What the [bleep]?

[Girl] Jay!

[Paul] Get outta there!

[screams] - She's gonna get electrocuted!

- I think about this too whenever I'm making a character, writing a character, and I'm working through it, I have to, at some point stop myself and go, "Okay, wait a second.

This character, two things, What do they want?

And what do they need?"

And I always think of those.

They're usually the opposite from each other, right?

They usually want something, you know, Tom Cruise in "Top Gun."

You know, "I wanna be the best pilot in the Navy, sir!"

Like he's asked, he says it out, like, "What do you want, Maverick?

What do you want?"

Like, "I wanna be the best pilot in the Navy, sir."

So that's what he wants, that's really clear.

What does he need?

Well, clearly he needs to like, you know, be in collaboration with other people and learn that he can be a wingman who stays on the wing of the guy, "I'm not leaving you."

He needs to learn that.

Which is exactly, it's the opposite of what the character says.

You know, so if Schwarzenegger says, "I'm a lone wolf.

I work alone."

We know he's gonna have a kindergarten kid going, "I'm your new partner!"

[laughing] It always is the opposite of what they say.

So I think I have to know that.

And if I don't, if I don't know what they want and what they need, then I have to stop, step away, and figure that out.

[typing] [typewriter ding] [Narrator] You've been watching On Writing Horror on On Story.

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