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Philip Gelatt • FIRST WORD ON HORROR

Written By:

Nicholas Spacek
Filmmaker Philip Gelatt

The new project from filmmaker Philip Gelatt (Spine Of Night, Love Death + Robots), First Word on Horror, is unique in several respects. The fifteen-part documentary series profiles five of the finest horror writers working today, including New York Times best sellers, multi-award winners, and cult favorites: Stephen Graham Jones, Paul Tremblay, Elizabeth Hand, Laird Barron and Mariana Enriquez. The series will be available exclusively via Substack starting on February 7, and in the episodes, “each author discusses their life, their inspirations, their philosophies, and their writing techniques while reading one of their short stories. As fact and fiction blend, secrets are revealed and the delicate alchemy that turns human experience into creative expression begins to emerge.”

It’s a fascinating watch for fans of horror, books, and all of the places where those intersect. With a visual style which goes far beyond the usual talking head documentary style, First Word on Horror is a look into the creative process which is equally informative and wildly entertaining. We caught up with Philip Gelatt to discuss how it all came together.

STARBURST: You’re bringing more to First Word on Horror than just the standard talking head aspect of any sort of documentary. Did the interviews determine what the final product was going to look like?

Philip Gelatt: No, not really, but then also, we each approached each sort of as its own unique little thing. They all happened organically. When we started Steven Graham Jones to start that episode, I didn’t know what he was going to say, but I knew what I was going to ask him. I actually thought he was going to read a different story than the story he ended up reading, so all of those visuals basically were created after the fact, right? We did the interview, we cut it together, and I was like, “Oh, this actually isn’t what I thought it was going to be, so now we have to go figure out a different set of visuals to put with his story.”

Whereas the Elizabeth Hand one, I always knew I wanted to do one that had animation in it, but the type of animation shifted. I thought we were going to do it one way, and then we started that way. They all evolved into their final form over the process, basically.

We love the fact that there is a little bit of rotoscoping animation in that, nodding back to Spine Of Night. How did you choose the authors? You’ve done work with Laird Barron, having adapted his story, “-30-,” into They Remain back in 2018, but it’s a very good mix of authors and the way they approach horror. How did you come down to these five?

I’ll say again, sort of organically. We kept it at five just because we wanted to get it out there and see people respond to it. I say that by way of saying there are so many other authors that I would love to do this with. These five ended up being the first five.

We started with Laird. As you point out, I’ve known Laird for a long time, and I’ve known that his life has been a very interesting one, to say the least. A couple of years ago, he got very sick and almost died. When he recovered, I was like, “Okay, I need I need to sit down and do this interview with you because if you if you go off and die on me, I’ll be sad if I don’t if I haven’t done this.”

So we did. We started with Laird. Then that one turned out interesting enough that my producing partner on it said, “I don’t know what we’re going to do with just Laird. Why don’t we go get other authors and try to turn this into a series?” So it evolved from there. We knew Stephen Graham Jones beforehand, so it was easy to ask him, and I knew that his life had been interesting.

I would say that the first criteria for each of them was a little bit like, “Is there something unique and interesting and potentially in their biography?” Definitely for Stephen Graham Jones, definitely for Laird, definitely for Elizabeth Hand, and definitely for Mariana [Enriquez], which leaves Paul [Tremblay].

I’m gonna tell this ridiculous story about Paul, where I asked Paul Tremblay if he wanted to be interviewed. And he was like, “Yeah, I will do it. But I gotta ask, are you asking me because I’m going to be the boring one?” And I was like, “Well, I mean, that’s not why I’m asking you. That might be what happens,” but it’s not what happened. I think his episode is as compelling as the rest, even though he doesn’t have stories of violence in West Texas, such as being assaulted, etc.

Anyway, I’m not really answering your question other than to say it happened organically. We would finish one interview and then think a little bit about what we wanted to try to get out of the next one, then, as we were editing, look at all the interviews together and think about how to edit them properly to create a kind of coherent whole.

Author Paul Tremblay. // image courtesy EG PR

What’s super fascinating about the Paul Tremblay part is that, while his story isn’t as out there as some of the other authors, it is a fascinating story in the fact that he started writing later. He started writing as a teacher. All of the stories are absolutely fascinating in the way you put it together. In terms of being a writer yourself, how did that inform the questions you asked?

In every interview, about half of it is me asking biographical questions, and the other half is me asking process questions and philosophical questions about what is the horror genre and why we make it. All those questions really come from questions I’ve asked myself, honestly, about my own process. In the back half of the interview, I asked them all basically the same questions, with some slight variations, but they’re basically all being asked the same questions because I was curious to hear the differences in answers.

A lot of those are about trying to ask the question, “Where do ideas come from?” without asking that question? Because who hates being asked that question? Anybody who’s ever written a story hates that question, right? But we all ask it, so it’s me trying not to ask that question, but also by asking it in a different way.

Then a lot of them were on just the writing process in general: “Do you have rituals? Is there a thing you have to do before you can write?” Another one was about – again, because the question of how biography flows into creativity is a question that underlies the whole series – human creativity and where it comes from, et cetera, et cetera. I would ask each of them also, “Where do you stop and the story start?” another way of saying, “Are you in control of your characters, or are they in control themselves?” I am trying to ask the question, “Where does the story come from? How does it happen?”

I think there are things that most people wonder about writers, but they also come from my writing experience.

The tags at the end of each episode – be it a video game, a song, or something like that – where did your inspiration for that come from, to ask you the question that I shouldn’t be asking?

No, people should still ask all these questions that people hate being asked. It’s important. In terms of the form of it, that also arose organically. I’m a big fan of Errol Morris interviews. I think that probably a lot of people who sit down to make a documentary are like, “I’m going to make a documentary like Errol Morris makes one.” That was definitely my first thought – like, “Okay, how does he do it?” Then, once we started to think about different distribution models – because we’re putting the show up on Substack, which is not a thing that people do a lot or ever – that was an incredibly exciting moment for me creatively because once you make a decision like that, it means that you can make it however you want to make it.

A lot of those tags and little like weird – if you re-watch the episodes, I’ve tried to put a bunch of visual in-jokes and weird little things for people to notice in there. All of that almost came after the Substack decision because I was like, “Well, if this is 100% ours and we’re doing it our own way, then we can make this form however we want it to be and we can do whatever we want to do with it.”

Author Stephen Graham Jones. // image courtesy EG PR

Are there authors that you would like to have featured but are just unapproachable in this medium? I’m thinking of someone like Thomas Ligotti or something like that would be absolutely fascinating for this, but there’s no way he would do it.

So, I’m going to tell you something: I tried to get Thomas Ligotti. I did my best, and I couldn’t get him. So I guess the answer to your question is, “Yes, Thomas Ligotti is ungettable,” but there aren’t any other than him that we tried to get who said no. I’m not even sure that Ligotti ever had the opportunity to say no.

It’s a long story to get into, but we couldn’t get to him. Basically, there are a lot of authors who I would like to approach, and hopefully, they would say yes. I think he’s probably the most unapproachable. I would also say this – no shade on Stephen King – there’s no point in doing something like this about Stephen King because everybody already knows that story.

Authors of that enormous stature? It almost wouldn’t be interesting to me to talk to. I’m much more interested in finding authors like the ones we found that are big authors in the genre, but they’re not enormous Stephen King-style authors.

Who would be the author no longer living you would die to approach?

There are a lot of them. The most honest answer is probably like years ago before I started with the Laird episode, the actual original idea for this was to try to get Peter Straub to sit down and talk about his work because I think he’s such a monumental writer of a similar class and was friends with Stephen King. I was like, “Oh, somebody should do something about Peter Straub.”

Peter Straub died, of course, so that won’t happen. Somebody could still make a documentary about him, but he wouldn’t be in it, so Peter Straub comes to mind. I mean, there’s a bunch, like Carl Edward Wagner comes to mind, as well. He died a long time ago. Somebody should do Ramsey Campbell before Ramsey Campbell dies.

Somebody should do Clive Barker, but Clive Barker is almost on that King line for me, but I also feel like I don’t think I’ll have the opportunity. There’s just so many. Sorry, I veered off your question. The answer to your question is Peter Straub.

First Word on Horror premieres Friday, February 7th, via Substack. You can subscribe here.

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