Interview: Director David A. Weiner Talks Creating IN SEARCH OF DARKNESS: THE DEFINITIVE ‘80S HORROR DOCUMENTARY, A Film For the Fans by the Fans
Michelle Swope
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No matter what kind of genre fan you are, there’s no doubt that the eighties were the most iconic era in cinema. I grew up in the eighties and that’s when I was finally able to express myself as a horror fan, so eighties horror movies have a very special place in my heart. Thanks to the new film In Search of Darkness: The Definitive ‘80s Horror Documentary, genre fans can celebrate their love of eighties horror, discover some films they might have missed, and learn some insanely cool behind-the-scenes secrets about some of their favorite horror movies.
Written and directed by David A. Weiner, a filmmaker, magazine editor, and journalist, and executive produced by Robin Block of CreatorVC, In Search of Darkness is the most comprehensive horror documentary that has ever been created. The film features more than forty interviews with a myriad of talent from all corners of the horror genre including John Carpenter (Halloween, The Thing), Barbara Crampton (Re-Animator, From Beyond), Don Mancini (Child’s Play), Joe Dante (Gremlins, The Howling), Kelli Maroney (Chopping Mall), Tom Atkins (Halloween III: Season of the Witch), and Greg Nicotero (Evil Dead II), just to name a few.
In Search of Darkness also includes discussions with industry experts, pop culture commentators, and journalists, like Joe Bob Briggs (The Last Drive-In), Ryan Turek (producer, Halloween [2018]), Heather Wixson (author and Managing Editor, Daily Dead), Phil Nobile Jr. (Editor-in-Chief, Fangoria magazine), James Rolfe (YouTube creator, Angry Video Game Nerd and Cinemassacre), Corey Taylor (Lead singer of Slipknot), and so many more. The documentary touches on many important aspects of eighties pop culture like fashion, politics, and the AIDS epidemic, which all influenced horror movies.
Dread Central was thrilled to have the opportunity to speak with David A. Weiner about creating In Search of Darkness, being a nostalgia curator, his favorite eighties horror movie, and a lot more. Read on to find out what we talked about!
In Search of Darkness will have its World Premiere at Beyond Fest on October 6th. The film is set for release in October and a date will be announced soon.
Dread Central: You’ve been called a “nostalgia curator” and In Search of Darkness is an such incredible love letter to eighties horror. Why did you want to make this film?
David Weiner: Well, this film is sort of a convergence of opportunity and experience for me. Prior to doing this, I was the Executive Editor of Famous Monsters of Filmland magazine, which probably tells you something about me. I worked for Entertainment Tonight for a very long time and I currently do genre interviews for the Heat Vision section of Hollywood Reporter. So, all of this stuff to me is super fun. I love genre film, I love genre filmmakers, and I love digging deep and finding out the stories. This project was the brainchild of Robin Block, who is the Executive Producer, and it came my way and I just could not resist. I came on initially as an advisor and the opportunity to write and direct it came on a silver platter to me and, how could I say no? It’s got everything I love. It’s an investigation and a thorough journey through one of the greatest decades in the horror genre. Plus, I get to sit down for extended periods of time with all these amazing creators and experts and talented individuals.
DC: You brought together so many of the people who were responsible for eighties horror in some way, including director John Carpenter, actors Barbara Crampton and Tom Atkins, and industry experts like Ryan Turek and Joe Bob Briggs, just to name a few. How did you decide who you wanted to be a part of this documentary?
DW: That was a very easy, but difficult process. Once we found that we were getting a lot of the people that we wanted to be involved, it occurred to me that this could have a real snowball effect, which is a good thing and a bad thing. Because the more people you get, the less time they get individually and the more ground you have the opportunity to cover, if you want, but the film is going to get longer and longer. I realized that as we were getting past forty and on our way to fifty really fast, that I was going to have to budgetwise and resource wise and just information wise, I had to just, unfortunately, draw the line.
I’d still be interviewing some of these people if I could, because there were so many great stories to tell. So, for me it was important to get people who were a real solid cross section of directors, writers, actors, composers, special effects masters, and knowledgeable journalists and experts in the field, who could all come together to tell a very interesting and wide-ranging, yet coherent story from a knowledgeable standpoint, whether it was experience or study and fandom. I basically decided that we would go after some of the really top names that we wanted, but we really can’t say, “Yes” to everybody. So, I think we accomplished that, and I’d love to keep on adding more [laughs] in a future iteration of this.
DC: You did such a fantastic job describing the eighties in this documentary. I appreciate how you covered things like fashion and politics that were reflected in eighties horror films. There are some really cool behind-the-scenes stories and you included some amazing stuff about special effects.
DW: I thought it was important to mention and touch on, reference, a lot of the pop culture, politics, and like you said, fashion. And fads that were going on, but not going into it ad nauseam, so it didn’t feel like it was a VH1 Pop-up video show. I think it’s important, especially the further away we get from that decade, the more I think you need some cultural touchstones to create some context. One of my favorite shots in this movie is a shot from Poltergeist, where you have the dad reading a book about Ronald Reagan. It was such a treat for me to be able to just pop in that in while Alex Winter was talking about Reaganomics and some of the more challenging elements of the eighties, because I think it perfectly illustrates what was going on in that era. You don’t want to be too didactic about it, so I think having some references and letting you decide for yourself to a certain degree how horror was responding to the times.
Having people there like John Carpenter responding to Oliver Stone’s Wall Street and greed is good and how that wasn’t perceived as bad but embraced by the corporate raiders of the eighties. It just turned his stomach and They Live was his response. To have him verbalize that and to be able to show it and have Keith David talk about elements of that was just a real treat for me to be able to use that as a tool to discuss that kind of stuff without choosing a political side necessarily.
DC: In Search of Darkness touches on almost every single horror movie from the eighties and even brought a few movies to my attention that I haven’t seen yet. Do you have a favorite eighties horror movie and why?
DW: Wow, well that’s a wonderful question because it’s impossible for me to give a specific movie, just because I love so many. Also, in the process of making this movie, I got a greater appreciation for some of the films and franchises that I kind of took for granted. Everyone’s got their kicks. It changes day by day and it depends on my mood. I would single out, at the time when I was watching these movies as they were being released, Fright Night was a real big film for me. Tom Holland’s Fright Night meant a lot to me because I saw that in a theater when I had nothing else to do on a Friday night. My girlfriend said, “Let’s go see a movie.” And we didn’t want to see any of the other choices because they just seemed boring. We looked at that poster and we thought, “Well, Fright Night is just a scary movie. It’s all we’ve got. Let’s just watch it. It might be bad.”
It turned out to be smart, clever, extremely entertaining and kind of a sucker punch of a movie because we literally decided to see it based on the poster and title and nothing else. It turned out to have incredible production value. The effects that Steve Johnson and his team, who all came from Ghostbusters, put together for this film just elevated into something that was one of my absolute favorites for years, because I did not see it coming. And I just love the concept because it’s so basic. I can go on forever about Fright Night. It’s got Roddy McDowell and vampires and werewolves and transformations and humor and all the elements of just an absolute fun romp.
DC: You’ve been working on this documentary for a long time and thousands of people supported the Indiegogo and Kickstarter campaigns to make this happen. In Search of Darkness will have its World Premiere at Beyond Fest on October 6th. How does it feel to have finally completed it and to be able to show it to an audience of genre fans?
DW: It’s incredibly rewarding and it’s incredibly surreal for me, because I’ve been in the entertainment industry ever since I left college. I went to film school at Ithaca College and came out in California to work on movie sets. I’ve worked in the field for quite some time. I’ve always been on the other side of it, but it’s always something I’ve wanted to do, one day make my own film, and have a red carpet and a poster and the premiere. I think what makes this something that’s incredibly rewarding to me is the fact that you mentioned all the fans. You mentioned the crowdfunding element. We have, I think, over four thousand backers and they’ve been incredibly supportive, incredibly excited. From the get-go, this has been a film that is for the fans by the fans.
The tightknit group that has made this, which is CreatorVC, Robin Block’s production company, we’re dotted all around the globe and we were able to put this together with modern technology, so to speak. I mean, my Editor is in the UK and Robin is in the UK, and I’m in Los Angeles and we managed to make a movie together as a team. We’re passionate fans and we love horror and we love genre filmmaking. To finally be able to premiere this on the big screen, at such a cool genre festival that is really raucous and excitable, it’s not stuffy. It’s a big party. I’m very excited to be able to have this opportunity.
DC: Congratulations! I really love this documentary. Growing up in the eighties is responsible for my love of horror, but I feel like younger people can watch this and learn to appreciate eighties horror as well.
DW: One of the cool elements is having people like James Rolfe and Cecil Trachenburg of Angry Video Game Nerd and Cinemassacre. They’ve courted a whole younger generation who are seeing this stuff for the first time. You talked about me being a nostalgia curator, they’re the ultimate nostalgia curators, because, especially with all the options today like on demand, they know that there is great stuff out there but they don’t know where to start and they need someone to curate for them. They need someone to guide them and show them the way, so to have those folks involved in this project to help them.
I think this film is a really great way to introduce people to a lot of new stuff, but also so many people have heard of the killer icons like Jason and Freddy, Chucky, Leatherface, and Pinhead, but they haven’t necessarily seen all the movies. They’ve only seen one of them. They haven’t seen the virtues of why Halloween III is beloved and radically different. They might not even know Michael Myers wasn’t in it and everyone got angry because he wasn’t in there [laughs], but everyone loves it now because it’s just so goofy. For all these reasons, I think this film is a perfect jumping off point to discover more on your own and to revisit the stuff that you may have a new take on now based on having watched this film.
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