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An American Werewolf In London with Richard Sheppard
199 Plays2 years ago
For this episode we're joined by Richard Sheppard, host of The Constant Reader Podcast, which takes a deep dive into all things Stephen King, from his numerous novels to the equally numerous movie and TV adaptations of his work.
Richard talks with us about John Landis's seminal 1981 film An American Werewolf in London, a horror comedy that is funny and scary in equal measure, and remains the high watermark for werewolf movies everywhere, and especially so for a curious period in the early 1980s when werewolf fever seems to have had America in its lycanthropic claw. We talk werewolves in general, taking in themes of duality, Jewishness, sexuality, the Beauty and the Beast myth, and of course, the literally transformative advances made in movie make-up and special effects technology in the late 1970s and early 1980s.
We also take the time to talk about The Constant Reader Podcast, about podcasting more generally, and the possibilities of making your voice heard using non-conventional means.
Elsewhere, The Judge delivers her verdict on defamation, we'll hear Third Player, our very own Christopher's winning entry from the January 300-word challenge, and A Better Yesterday, Reiver33's winning entry from the February 75-word challenge, and a regular evening down in Slish Wood takes a turn for the worse when a full Moon appears from behind the clouds...
Further Reading and Links
The Constant Reader Podcast
Join SFF Chronicles for free
Index
[00:00] Richard Sheppard Interview Part 1
[47:20] Voicemail 1
[48:23] The Judge's Corner
[1:02:24] Voicemail 2
[1:03:08] Writing Challenge Winners
[1:06:18] Voicemail 3
[1:07:08] Richard Sheppard Interview Part 2
Join us next month when we talk to author Stephen Cox about swords and sorcery in Fritz Leiber's genre classic Swords And Deviltry, featuring two of fantasy's greatest heroes, Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser, and Stephen's latest novel Our Child Of Two Worlds.
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Transcript
Introduction to Cronscast and Hosts
00:00:15
Speaker
Hello, and welcome along to Cronscast, the official podcast of SFF Chronicles, the world's largest science fiction and fantasy community. I'm Dan Jones.
Exploring Werewolf Films and An American Werewolf in London
00:00:24
Speaker
And I'm Christopher Bean, and today I'm very excited about our guest who's going to be talking about werewolves, in particular John Landis' 1981 hit, An American Werewolf in London.
00:00:35
Speaker
Probably tied as the most well-known werewolf film along with Lon Chaney Jr.'s Wolfman a 40 years earlier, American Werewolf in London is a perfect blend of horror and comedy under the direction of John Landis.
Guest Introduction: Richard Shepherd
00:00:46
Speaker
It also showcased Rick Baker's genre-defining, Oscar-winning makeup effects in what must be one of the most painful transformations to Beast.
00:00:54
Speaker
I can't believe there'll be anyone listening who hasn't seen this film, but just in case, it follows two friends from the States holidaying in England who ignore the villagers warnings to keep to the path and stray onto the moors under a full moon. Oh, and it has Rick Mail in it too. Joining us today is the writer and podcaster Richard Shepherd.
00:01:14
Speaker
Richard is the host of the popular Stephen King podcast, The Constant Reader Podcast, where he invites writers, filmmakers, and academics to take a deep dive into the great man's many books and their adaptations for film and TV. He's even allowed me on once or twice. His fiction can be found in The Book of the Sea, published by Egeus Press, and Sock Ops and Sciences, published by 18th Wall Productions.
00:01:38
Speaker
His academic articles can be found in gender and contemporary horror and film published by Emerald Publishing, as well as a forthcoming special edition of the Journal of Horror Studies focusing on Stephen King. He's currently studying for his MRes at the University of East Anglia under the tutelage of Professor Mark Yankovic, and this is why we're excited to have Richard on today.
Cultural Resurgence of Werewolf Films in 1981
00:01:58
Speaker
His research is focused on 1981, The Hollywood Year of the Wolf.
00:02:03
Speaker
and the cultural factors that caused such a resurgence in interest in world war films at that time. So hello Richard. Hello gentlemen, thank you for having me. Nope, it's wonderful to have you. Thanks for being with us. Now usually we would kick off with
00:02:19
Speaker
Why did you pick this particular book or film? But I think we've already answered that question to some degree in the biography at the beginning. So I'm going to say, what is it about American werewolf in London that excites you so much?
00:02:36
Speaker
Well, there is a certain autobiographical element to this, I should say. When I was a kid, probably like yourselves, I loved monster films, I loved horror movies, Stephen King novels, and I would stay up late sometimes to watch these things, surreptitiously without my parents knowing. And I had a tiny little black and white television set with an aerial, and it would fade in and out. And I stayed up one night to watch An American Wealth in London.
00:03:04
Speaker
The images faded in and out and in and out and I twist the aerial to get a better picture. On one of those sequences, the dream sequence, it faded in just at the moment when David Norton sitting up in bed and his eyes bulge out and the fangs bulge out from his face. It's a terrifying moment. I was so close to the screen adjusting the aerial, it imprinted on me.
00:03:28
Speaker
and I've never forgotten it. Ever since then, every time an American World for London is on television or re-released on DVD, Blu-ray, 4K, laser disc in the cinema, I've always made a point to go and see and recapture some of that terrifying magic that it cast on me. Plus, I think it's just a very good
Horror-Comedy Blend in Werewolf Films
00:03:50
Speaker
film. It's in a genre that's very difficult to get right, the horror comedy.
00:03:56
Speaker
And it just works as an example of that. The horror is truly horrific and the comedy is truly amusing. And yeah, I think it's just a beautiful piece of work.
00:04:09
Speaker
is very difficult to get right. And I remember listening to one of your podcast episodes, I believe we were talking about him just before we went on air, Andy Stanton on one of the It episodes, he mentioned that comedy and horror
00:04:26
Speaker
are essentially the same genre because there is a building of suspense and it builds and it builds and then the tension is released in this big cathartic moment which is either a laugh or a scare and American werewolf has that both in spades.
00:04:42
Speaker
Oh yeah, there's a lot to be said for the fine line between a jump scare and a good gag. They're both surprising and they both interfere with the mundane, don't they? I mean, a joke is essentially a transgressive thing, isn't it? It's something that happens out of the ordinary. Well, it's something that just sort of pokes at the edges of reality, doesn't it?
00:05:01
Speaker
Yeah, it says, you know, you think this is one thing, but it's actually something else, something you didn't expect. And I think that works really well in this film, because the punch lines are quite horrific in a way. And the way it blends like the, I'm sure we'll talk about a later Griffin Dunn's character, who comes back to haunt his best friend, and he's growing gradually more
00:05:24
Speaker
Incorporate. Yeah, exactly. He's turning into a living skeleton before our eyes. But he's the most- A walking meatloaf, I think is how he describes it. And he gets all the good lines. He does get the best lines. Although I think David Norton does have one of the best lines just before he goes into the transformation. He does say, I'm sorry, I called you a meatloaf, Jack.
00:05:49
Speaker
It is a fair point. As we're on the transformation, I mean, why not go in there right away and talk about the transformation?
Impact of Transformation Scenes in Werewolf Films
00:05:56
Speaker
And it's because it is one of, it's probably one of the most iconic moments, not just in the film, but I think in the werewolf genre.
00:06:06
Speaker
It's not the first time that a transformation of that type was made in the films. You'll probably know a lot more about this than us. But in The Howling, there was essentially a very similar transformation, which was a year before. And Chris mentioned Rick Baker's Oscar-winning special effect in American Werewolf. The year prior to that, he had worked makeup on The Howling as well.
00:06:32
Speaker
And a lot of the special effects were very similar but as far as I'm aware he upgraded the effects and he tweaked them and he improved them and what you get at the end of the sequences. Well, you get the sequence that we have today which is memorable, terrifying and pretty gruesome. Absolutely. As soon as you kind of start to study and research the
00:06:58
Speaker
the making of American Wealth in London, you realize how closely intertwined it is with The Howling, which was like the other big werewolf film of 1981. There are a lot of others as well, but they're the two that get best remembered.
00:07:13
Speaker
Originally, John Landis had the idea for the American World for London in 1969, when he was working as a gopher on the set of Kelly's Heroes. And he was in deepest, darkest Romania. And he witnessed a burial at a crossroads. And the body was staked to the ground. And he became interested in this idea that the
00:07:35
Speaker
Superstitions still existed in what was considered to be the modern world. So he wrote a werewolf script on the back of that. But his, the raison d'etre for his werewolf script was he wanted a full body transformation in the actual film, you had to see everything. So it took him a long time to
00:07:52
Speaker
get the technical wherewithal to kind of do this. And he works with Rick Baker on his first film, Schlock, in 1974, which, when you see it now, it's kind of ludicrous. It's a man in a monkey suit film. You know, it's like a very cheap King Kong ripoff. But you can see the beginnings of the relationship between the two men there, where it's like the makeup artist becomes the star of the film, the effects become the star.
00:08:18
Speaker
And so he gets the money together to make an American welfare London in 1981 and says to Rick Baker, I've got the money to make this film. And Rick Baker says, I've already signed on to do the Howling with Joe Dante.
00:08:33
Speaker
So John Landis, who is a very bombastic character, I don't know if you've ever seen him interviewed, but he's a very verbose, very kind of in-your-face kind of guy, screams at Rick Baker and tells him, no, you've got to do my film, you promised to do my film. So Rick Baker compromises, and he sends his protege, Rob Bettine, to do the howling.
00:08:53
Speaker
and he does an American welfare numbers. And Robertine, of course, is famous for The Year After Does The Thing, and essentially redefines a special effects horror film in that film. But I mean, yeah, to go back to your original point, yeah, the special effects are kind of the star of the film, and that is the spectacle of the film. It's like Superman, which was sold on the idea that you'll believe a man can fly. This film is you'll believe a man can turn into a wolf.
00:09:19
Speaker
And it reminds me of Alien as well in a certain way. You had this glut of films, The Thing, Alien, Superman and American Wolf in London. And there are plenty of others around the same time where there's these marvellous manual analogue special effects happening. But what I think Landis does really well is he holds back until 58 minutes into what's only a one hour, 37 minute film.
00:09:46
Speaker
It's not a particularly long film and he holds back and he holds back and he holds back and it's 58 minutes until you see David turn into the world and.
00:09:58
Speaker
holding back for that long, it just increases the amount of power and the amount of tension that you get from the transformation, which is like Alien. It's just a slow build of tension for the first hour and then wham, John Hurt gets it when they're all having breakfast. It takes a lot of confidence, I think, for a director to hold off for that amount of time.
00:10:23
Speaker
before going in with the money shot. Yeah, but you got to think before that point, you have had like at least four different graphic dream sequences in which he turns into a monster in which he looks like he's gone back to New York, but instead decapitated and his family are massacred by a group of war kind of war. Yeah.
00:10:46
Speaker
Yeah well we'll talk about that because that's really that's a really interesting scene there but um yeah that's that's a really gruesome and bloody scene but if you watch when you watch it back it's just a bunch of actors wearing masks and
00:11:00
Speaker
very good masks actually. They're wearing masks and SS uniforms and that's it. There's no special effects really involved. No, but it's probably the scariest sequence in the film, the Nazi werewolf dream. That is the most frightening sequence because it's the most real. The transformation is
00:11:23
Speaker
is horrifying and it's gruesome. Are they werewolves? Because I never saw them as werewolves. They're Nazis. They're like rawhead wrecks kind of face thing. They don't look anything like David does. I suppose he doesn't have a reference.
00:11:38
Speaker
No, they don't know. And I suppose why would you? Because I suppose John Landis would not want to spoil his money shot later in the film. He wouldn't want to use that, the same sort of imagery earlier in the film. Yeah, they're just sort of basic rubber masks that the dream Nazis are wearing. But it doesn't detract from the frightening element of the scene because it's real.
00:12:05
Speaker
I'm going to go way back here to something that you mentioned earlier, which is about John Landis going to Romania, which I didn't know about that. It's really interesting because there is a fleeting element of folk horror to American werewolf. It's touched upon when the boys are in the Yorkshire Moors and they see the pentangle in the slaughtered lamb pub.
00:12:27
Speaker
So you've got the elements of folk horror going on there, and then it pulls back, I guess, because it has to for plot reasons. But it's nice to see that there's a bit of an element of folk horror just bubbling away underneath the surface of American werewolf. Oh, no, absolutely. To go back to the point about the Nazi demons as well.
00:12:48
Speaker
There is a reason why it seems quite chaotic and random is it was kind of an afterthought that scene with a kind of wanted something else at that point and john landis i think that the record just give me like four scary masks there in your workshop at the time that's what's the strange kind of dislocated quality to it.
00:13:06
Speaker
But to put it into a folk horror genre, I think that's very interesting because the sequence where the boys enter the slaughtered lamb pub, it's a lot like the bit where Sergeant Neil Howie walks into the pub and the wicker man, isn't it? It's the idea of you're the outsider and there's obviously some kind of ritual or tribal customer you don't know
00:13:27
Speaker
what it is, and it kind of repulses you and interests you at the same time. And they seem to really egg that bit far more than, say, the Wicker Man.
Outsider Themes and Folk Horror Elements
00:13:38
Speaker
The slaughtered lamb has implicit humor in just the accents and just the way they're looking at each other, much more so than the weird otherness of Wicker Man. The humor starts immediately.
00:13:54
Speaker
Yeah, and with the joke that Brian Glover's chess player tell about the Alamo, which is a very mean joke to play on the two American lads who walk in, but it is quite funny. And we won't go through the whole joke now, you just have to go and watch the film.
00:14:11
Speaker
But it does have that quality. I think that everybody can relate to of like being in the wrong place at the wrong time and just being an outsider. I mean, it can occur anywhere. And actually the whole point is he's an American werewolf in London. He's a foreigner. So he feels like a foreigner does. He feels out of place. He doesn't know the customs. He doesn't know the rituals. But there are a couple, the sense of otherness is.
00:14:37
Speaker
or being out of place, or out of time even, is a strong theme that's running through the movie. And for all of it, it does have some quite broad comedy, and even a bit of slapstick, where the copper drops all the...
00:14:55
Speaker
kidney bulbs on the floor and makes a terrible clutter. For all of the comedy that's in there, there is quite a strong subtext of alienation and otherness. There's a strong Jewish subtext running through the film, which we've already alluded to in the appearance of the Nazi werewolf demons coming along. We find out that David Kessler, the main character, is a Jew.
00:15:24
Speaker
he is carrying around this aspect of his identity, which is at once immutable, but at the same time it will surface, it will surface, but at the same time it has to be suppressed and hidden. And if it does surface, then it could cause bloodshed for himself and for others. I don't know what you thought about that. It's an interesting point. It's never actually explicitly said that David Kefzler is Jewish though.
00:15:53
Speaker
It's hinted at. Yes, it's hinted at because the nurse, well, the cheeky nurse has a crafty peak. I think he's a cool, yeah. But then Nurse Price says it's actually quite common practice these days in North America, which it actually was at the time. A lot of people just circumcise as common practice. But yeah, I think there is that definite idea of
00:16:15
Speaker
I think there's a very interesting interpretation, particularly in the opening sequence where the boys are kind of on the cattle with the sheep on the cattle lorry. I mean, I don't want to reach too far here, but that is the idea of being on the trains, isn't it? Being herded sheep onto these things. And they are literal lambs to the slaughter, aren't they? They are the lambs on the truck that are going to be taken and killed somewhere. It's the idea of they are commodified in that manner.
00:16:45
Speaker
It's the word. It's the Nazi werewolves as well. Why have them as Nazis? It seems strange.
00:16:52
Speaker
I mean, the Nazis were horrific, just full stop, but it seems strange to make the Jewish comment and then have the Nazis as the nightmare antagonists in his dream. There is another World War II reference, it's sort of blink and you miss it, but Dr. Hirsch, which sounds like, played by John Woodvine, which sounds like a German name. I only realised this on a second rewatch recently. Sounds like a German name.
00:17:19
Speaker
But he said, if I can survive Rommel, then I think I can survive this. Which I thought was a great line. But no, I think there is definitely something there, because if you look, if you expand it outwards into John Lance's films, there is always, well, not always, but often there's this idea of antisemitism in the Nazis. You look at the Blues Brothers,
00:17:42
Speaker
who aren't Jewish, but are pursued by the Nazis. And the best sequence in that film is where they disrupt the Nazi rally who are talking about the Jewish invasion of America. So I think it's definitely something that Landis is interested in. And his film he makes, I think after this, is The Twilight Zone. His sequence of The Twilight Zone deals explicitly with anti-Semitism.
00:18:04
Speaker
Because the ill-fated Vic Morrow plays his characters thrown back in time and has to inhabit the body of persecuted minorities. So he plays a black guy who's almost lynched. He plays a Vietnamese guy who's stalked by American soldiers. And he plays a Jewish guy in Nazi occupied Germany, which I think is so it's definitely something that's on his mind. Yeah. It didn't end very well for three of the actors, though, did it?
00:18:31
Speaker
That was 1983, I think. It was only two years afterwards, so it would have very much been still in the present part of his mind. He was born into a Jewish family, wasn't he? So he would have been extremely aware of that. Oh, absolutely. He would have known. He'd worked in Hollywood for a very long time, he would have known.
00:18:56
Speaker
exactly kind of anti-Semitism on that level as well, and throughout Europe as well. He talks about it a lot during the making of the films he made in Europe, like Kelly's Hero and the Spy Who Loved Me, that he was seen as a Jewish writer. So yeah, no, I did some interesting interpretation. And I think Animal House as well also has an anti, the rival fraternity to the Animal House is anti-Semitic. They won't let Jewish people in. So it's obviously a battle he's still fighting in his films.
00:19:26
Speaker
is another example of this thrownness that's in the film. And it's again, it's a fleeting reference. But we've, Chris and I have spoken about this before, about the things that directors or writers put into their books and are they accidental? Are they intentional? And I strongly believe that they're always intentional, even if they're not consciously intentional. And the scene where it's after David has one of his nightmares and
00:19:55
Speaker
nurse Alex Price, that's Jenny Agata's character. She is reading a bedtime story to him and the bedtime story is Connecticut Yankee and King Arthur's Court, which is another example of a character who's thrown out of place in time and ends back in, he's a late 19th century American, so aware of all the technological innovations of that time. This is Mark Twain's novel from
00:20:23
Speaker
I'm going to say 1888, but I'm not sure if that's right. And he bumps his head and wakes up in the sixth century England, possibly seventh century. It's been a while since I had a look at that book. Sixth or seventh century England. And he sets about ruling over the place. He finds out that the old world
00:20:43
Speaker
is full of these backwards superstitions and he sets about fixing them by bringing technological superiority to the old world. So he's thrown out of time and place in the same way that David, who you said he's not aware of the customs, he's not aware of the local ways of life.
Werewolf as Metaphor for Duality of Man
00:21:01
Speaker
At the beginning, he and Jack
00:21:04
Speaker
They sort of laugh about it and they joke about it, which is fair enough because they're two lads on holiday, but it comes back to bite them quite literally. And the same thing happens in...
00:21:16
Speaker
in Connecticut and King Arthur's Court. It starts off as being quite chauvinistic towards the old world by saying these people are backwards, they're superstitious, they'll believe any old rubbish and I can use science and rationality to prove that I'm the most powerful man in the world and I can bring their society forward. But at the end of the novel, spoiler alert, he ends up slaughtering thousands of mounted knights using a Gatling gun.
00:21:43
Speaker
The same thing happens in American werewolf. He's brought low by the bloody urges that he's mocking in the people that he sees around him, but he's got no option but to give in to them, and he ends up slaughtering people in the old world when he turns into a werewolf.
00:22:07
Speaker
Yeah, I think people forget what a dark book the Connecticut Yankee King Arthur's Court really is. It really is very dark towards the end, isn't it? It is. Well, it's a very good point because
00:22:22
Speaker
In a way, that's the nature of the werewolf, isn't it? It's the idea that we do have this part of us that we think is advanced and civilized and not of the past. We do have this thing where we are also atavistic and cruel and vicious.
00:22:37
Speaker
And just because we're civilized, we call ourselves civilized, we think we have control over that part of us, the werewolf part of us. But I think what this film does, what a lot of the werewolf films do, it says, no, wait a minute, you're not as civilized as you think you are. And even if you are, you still have that germ of viciousness in you. And it happens a lot.
00:23:02
Speaker
in things like Henry James novels, like American people come to England and they get consumed by the oldness and the viciousness and the weirdness of the place. The new world meets the old world, just as the civilized meets the uncivilized. I think there's an assumption in a lot of these stories that if you're civilized, or to put it another way, we talked about this when we did the episode on Northern Lights, that if you're intellectual and rational,
00:23:32
Speaker
as Lord Asriel is in Northern Lights, if you're intellectual, you're rational, then you can become seduced by your own superiority. And you forget about exactly what the atavistic, cruel, malevolent side of your character, which is there, and you've got to watch out for it. You can't assume that you've suppressed it just because you've civilised yourselves, which again, the Nazis are in the film, in the dream sequence.
00:24:02
Speaker
That's exactly why they're there because they were real people. They weren't monsters, they weren't werewolves, they were people. The demon was brought out from within these ordinary men and they did appalling things.
00:24:14
Speaker
Well, it's interesting. I think that the military unit after the fall of Germany, they were called werewolf units and they were essentially sleeper cells, like German soldiers who took off their uniforms and tried to reintegrate back into society, but then would do sabotage work against kind of the allies who were invading at the time. And that was the werewolf contingent. So it's interesting that we've always had this idea
00:24:40
Speaker
of the beast. And also the idea that you can actually control that and embrace that. Because David Kesser is a classic werewolf and he's cursed with this thing. He can't help turning into the wolf. It's not something he wants. But if you look at something like the howling, that goes the other way. And people
00:24:56
Speaker
kind of born werewolves and they some of them enjoy it. And there's this character who's trying to control them and trying to civilize them. But it doesn't really work because they've chosen to be wild, you know, they've chosen to be extreme and to live this life. And they accept that as part of them does. I think that that's quite, that's quite Jungian, isn't it? The idea that you have to integrate the shadow, yes, integrate like the
00:25:20
Speaker
Yes, you have to walk the line, don't you? You have to know what you're capable of. If you're too good, then you'll just get swallowed by the other beasts out there, so you have to walk the line. Yeah, like Chris says, it's a much more sympathetic look at the werewolf. It can be a
00:25:37
Speaker
a liberating figure for some people. I think that happens more in fantasy fiction as well. The fantasy werewolf is often quite a heroic figure. I haven't read much fantasy, unfortunately. Well, I have to say, I was talking to Jo, my wife, before we did this a few days ago. She said, why are you doing American werewolf? And I said, well, it's generally considered to be one of the best werewolf films of all time. And she said, hello, Twilight.
00:26:06
Speaker
Sure, yeah. Okay, yeah, fair enough. But yeah, the werewolf is a heroic figure. Yeah, absolutely right. And it's funny, you mentioned fantasy fiction. Sorry, Dan, you mentioned fancy fiction. And I just I read The Talisman with the character is there's a kind of like a Wolfman character in there, which is a bit of a hero. It's a long time since I've read it. And I it wasn't particularly I love the Dark Tower cycle, but I wasn't too fond of The Talisman one. But
00:26:36
Speaker
isn't there a werewolf, a wolf man that helps the child in that? Yeah, I think he's just called wolf if memory
Werewolves in Fantasy Fiction
00:26:44
Speaker
serves. And I don't know, for anybody who hasn't read The Talisman, it's a book about the idea there are there are two worlds and you can kind of slip in between them. And one is our world and one is more of a fantastical world. And the wolf character is drawn from the fantastical world into our world. And it's interesting that he can't survive in that world. He's like a heroic,
00:27:05
Speaker
big figure in the fantasy world. In our world, he's crushed by civilization. He ends up having a nervous breakdown in a cinema because he can't deal with a cinema screen and he can't deal with modernization in technology, which again is that battle between the civilized and the uncivilized. But that exists at every strata, doesn't it? I mean, my favorite moment of the film is where
00:27:29
Speaker
John Woodwind, he goes back to the village to investigate and he walks into the pub and he asks for Campari soda. Which is an incredible... And then a small Guinness. Yeah, a small Guinness should suffice. Which he has two sips from and then just leaves.
00:27:47
Speaker
It probably wasn't very good. It probably hadn't cleaned the lines in a while. But it's just the idea that he is also an outsider because of his class and because he's from the city and because he's a professional person. And the idea that in a way a lot of people are, you even have the punks on the underground who are also like experimenting with wildness and the idea that everybody kind of has this battle within them, this thing that they are not and the thing they are. And they're kind of presented with that, you know?
00:28:17
Speaker
Let's talk about Journey Agata's character, Nurse Alex Price. There is a bit of a ham-fisted segue between the previous point and talking about Journey Agata. In that, this duality theme that's in the movie quite strongly, it also refers to, well, there's a hint of a Beauty and the Beast storyline.
00:28:41
Speaker
in the film as well and in Beauty and the Beast myth, traditionally the role of the female character is to draw the good man out of the beast because the man is... the beast is all potential. He looks monstrous but he's got the potential to be a very good man but he's also got the potential to do great harm as well and it's down to Belle in Beauty and the Beast to extract the good man out of him.
00:29:08
Speaker
and make him useful to her, to society. And Alex is trying to do that in American World in London, but, well, it's a horror film, so I suppose it has to end in tragedy. She fails.
00:29:22
Speaker
I think there is a great metaphor for sexuality in this, and it's not just in American welfare London. It happens in pretty much every werewolf film going back to Lon Chaney in 1941. He's also fallen in love, and he's also turning into a wolf at the same time.
00:29:39
Speaker
So he has that repressed sexuality in him that turns the wolf outwards, because he has to go by the meringues and inventions of society at the time. But he's also in love, and he's also got this sexual energy that's building up that's represented by the wolf, I think. It's interesting that
00:30:01
Speaker
He has, Kessler has a great deal of sexual potency and energy, which seems surprising to him. And it's also because he's falling in love and also because he's turning into a wolf. And so he has two ideas twined around each other. And he feels like he kills a bunch of people the next morning, he says, I feel full of energy. Let's go back and have a quickie. I feel so great. This is wonderful. And it's kind of this just bizarre idea that
00:30:26
Speaker
Yeah, he's kind of living an unrepressed life at this point, isn't it? And also, yeah, going back to what you said about the ending of these films, like normally the good man is drawn out from the beast. This is kind of the opposite. It's like the King Kong ending, where the beast realizes that he can't exist anymore. So he has to die. You know, you can't separate the two. And it's a very sexual film. I mean, it's got pornography in it as well. It's got some wonderfully
00:30:56
Speaker
dour english pornography in the cinema i love that i think the porn sequence is probably one of the funniest bits of the film completely it's hilarious yeah it's absolutely brilliant and it feels so kind of staged uh compared to kind of uh kessler and price's love making doesn't it it's like this is a big english repression where it's um
00:31:19
Speaker
It's pornography, but it's also really awkward and gawky and weird. We say it's a very English view of sex, I think. Certainly. Well, the camera work in the shower scene is, you know, we've been sold this guy as, you know, turning into a beast, but there's a lot of sensuality and sensitivity in the shower. He's not mauling her and the hands are lingering on her back.
00:31:39
Speaker
and his hands lingering on her back. And I suppose we're meant to be thinking these are going to be claws at some point. But it's not this woman being objectified so much by the male gaze of the camera as that would in comparable films, I suppose. Yeah, he does come across as a very sexual without being overtly animalistic werewolf character.
00:32:03
Speaker
I guess at that point he's still all potential, isn't he? He's got the potential to be the good man and he's got the potential to be this monstrous beast that is going to rampage around the city.
00:32:17
Speaker
Which one of those sites is going to erupt? Yeah, National Lampoon's Animal House, because the students are essentially unformed adolescent animals who are going through their urges to drink and have sex and transgress. And at the end of it, you actually see what happened to them, and they all grow up. There's this little teletype at the end saying, so-and-so grew up to be a lawyer, or so-and-so grew up to get killed in Vietnam. And it's ideal that you are seeing people that
00:32:45
Speaker
kind of a liminal stage or a kind of a transformative stage, isn't it? Like when you're young, you have that potential. Yeah, you have that potential. That's why Peter Pan is called Peter Pan because Pan meets everything. He could be everything, but he hasn't grown up yet. A lot of films deal with teenage, a lot of war films deal with teenage protagonists for precisely that reason. Another brilliant one I think of just off the top of my head is Ginger Snaps.
00:33:13
Speaker
which flips it into a female pair of protagonists. Not so good, Teen Wolf, although we all love Teen Wolf. We mentioned the howling before. We talked about the way that the duality of man and beast is handled slightly different in the howling than in an American wolf in London.
1981: Hollywood's Year of the Wolf
00:33:35
Speaker
In the introduction to the episode, we talked about 1981 being the Hollywood year of the wolf. So it's not just American wolf and it's not just the howling. There was something else going on in the air around that time that led to this surge in interest in werewolf. So I was wondering if you could give us a little bit more information about that.
00:33:58
Speaker
Well, yeah, I think a very interesting film in terms of looking at an American wealth in London and the howling is a 1980 film, which you've probably seen called Altered States by Ken Russell, which is based on a novel by Paddy Chayefsky, who wrote Network and Hospital and a lot of kind of very
00:34:19
Speaker
searing social dramas about the state of America in the 60s and 70s. And Ultra States is interesting because the special effects were done by Dick Smith, who is kind of the grandfather of special effects makeup. He did The Exorcist, The Godfather, Taxi Driver. And for this film, he came up with what we would now call bladders, which is where you put air bladders under polyurethane makeup so you can do that transformative effects.
00:34:48
Speaker
And that's what allowed the full-body transformation that John Landis wanted for an American welfare London, this kind of revolutionary special effect. But Altered States is also about violent change. William Hurt plays a doctor who's experimenting with
00:35:06
Speaker
altered states of consciousness through drugs, basically, through first sensory deprivation tank. And then he takes kind of an ayahuasca type liquid in a ceremony in South America. And at the end of the film, he goes through, he turns into like a throwback ape like creature during the film. And at the end, he becomes like an amorphous, strange, chaotic, his body kind of
00:35:34
Speaker
doesn't know where it's going, it kind of expands and stretches outwards and becomes a strange alien creature. And this is kind of this kicks off this cycle of films, which is then picked up by an American worker in London, then the howling, then you have Larry Cohen's full moon high. And then you have portrayed cat people. And you also have Wolfen by Michael Wadley.
00:36:00
Speaker
which all deal with the idea of violent transformative change. And for me, the point is that at the time and the place these films were being made, the country itself was going through a violent transformative change. Because you have Jimmy Carter, the 70s, which is often called the me generation era. It's the idea of the self-reflective. It's the idea of alternative therapies. Hippies become
00:36:30
Speaker
obsessed with psychology and things like EST, Esalen, these kind of self-help communities. And then that ends during the 80s. And you have Ronald Reagan being elected. And he talks about what's called the new morning in America, which is essentially just saying, we're going pretty right wing here. We're going to focus on business. We're going to focus on the economy. We're going to marginalize some of the groups in the 70s, like
00:37:00
Speaker
the ecology movement, the gay movement, women's lib, they were kind of making ground in the 70s. We're going to push against that slightly, and we're going to go back to this kind of the family is the heart of the country kind of thing, a strong foreign policy, nukes, all that stuff, the Cold War.
Cultural Shifts Reflected in 1980s Films
00:37:19
Speaker
the idea that when people see these films, I think they see that kind of change happening around them. They see, you know, werewolves, they see hippies becoming businessmen, hippies becoming yuppies, you know, it's that idea that everybody goes sells out and become something else. And it's kind of interesting what we're saying about like the idea that it's like an adolescent concept, because a lot of people thought it was like a maturing like America is maturing and growing up now, it's becoming
00:37:48
Speaker
1980s which is becoming in a very real way like 1950s. When America was going through a golden age and it was experiencing a great deal of exponential growth in
00:37:58
Speaker
economy and culture in every way you looked. It was the American decade. And the 80s kind of harks back to that. A lot of these films hark back to that. I mean, Four Moon High is just a remake of I Was a Teenage Werewolf. And you also have a lot of other films released in the 80s, which are 50s remakes. Invaders from Mars gets remade. The Blob gets remade. Invasion of the Body Snatchers gets remade. It's the idea that they're looking back to that kind of halcyon past.
00:38:27
Speaker
I mean, does that sound likely to you that the idea that the culture kind of sees the films it wants to see? I think so. At the moment, Dan and I were talking the other day about this and I just watched it.
00:38:41
Speaker
the film again recently, and I'd said how the American eye of Britishness or Englishness in this film is so well observed, but also you want to think, what did they think of us? Because it's these comedic, ineffectual people or this person who is running through the underground saying, well, you know, this isn't on, it's not funny, whatever you're doing, you know, like this very British thing, not I'm about to be slaughtered.
00:39:10
Speaker
And then you have the people, the two people at the party.
00:39:15
Speaker
who never make it to the party, the couple, and they're suggesting the different ways he can kill himself. But everybody is so quaint and also quite small island. And now, if you bear in mind what we're doing at the moment in Britain and how the barriers are closing and how certain people are addressing Brexit and using that as a badge to perhaps
00:39:41
Speaker
you know, have a performative element of small Britain. Yeah, it's certainly you can pick it up whenever you're viewing a film, can't you? Because when you were just mentioning as well, not the fury, or was it altered states? Yeah, it made me think about video drone in the tech in the terms of, you know, going into the 80s and changing. Whereas if you watch video drone now, with the saturation of social media and the lack of censorship, you know, you can
00:40:08
Speaker
You can always find your parallels. And I think it's possibly, maybe it's clever, but maybe it's just part of being, you know, part of society. It's like we're just rehashing the same things again and again, but just seeing it through a different light. It's interesting. I think at the moment, we're mainly in the horror genre, we're seeing a rehashing of the 1990s at the moment.
00:40:34
Speaker
I don't know, just a couple of things I watched recently, like the TV series Yellow Jackets or Archive 81. Yeah, and Scream again, we're kind of repeating the 90s. Yeah, or they have like, separate narratives with one set in present day and the other set in the 90s. And it seems like a
00:40:52
Speaker
historical document, but I don't know, the 1990s doesn't seem like history to me. That seems like a few years. That's just our age, I'm afraid. Historical document is my life at this point. It's true. It's sad, isn't it?
00:41:10
Speaker
I know we talked about it, didn't we? A little bit earlier in the episode when we mentioned Andy. That book is about cycles, isn't it? Maybe these things do come around again and again and after a generation or so, because Pennywise disappears for 27 years, doesn't he? Around about one generation. The moon's every 28 days or whatever. Yes, exactly. There are these cycles of themes.
00:41:40
Speaker
It seems strange that the werewolf idea should be particularly strong in 1981. I appreciate the parallel with the change from a Carter administration to
00:41:55
Speaker
a Reagan administration, but it seems strange that there should be this sort of peak werewolf around 1980, 1981 rather than anywhere else, so at any other time. But it's not like we've left werewolves behind. There are still plenty of examples of werewolves in film. It doesn't go away.
00:42:17
Speaker
It's interesting from a writer perspective because there are lots of people I'm sure on Crohn's who like to write the more fantasy orientated monster story. So with vampires, werewolves, that sort of thing. It comes up quite frequently. So it's interesting to have this planting werewolves in a particular time and place.
00:42:39
Speaker
No, absolutely. And I think it's part of what we do is we look for patterns, don't we? I mean, two years before 1981, you had, I think, four or five different Dracula projects around. And I haven't looked too deeply into what that kind of says about the need for people to watch vampire films. And yeah, you do see patterns in films. And sometimes it's technologically based, like they'll have a new computer program that is able to do
00:43:06
Speaker
lava really well. So you'll have two films about volcanoes, or you'll have like, they can do asteroids really well. So you have like two or three films with asteroids hitting the
Technological Advancements in Werewolf Films
00:43:15
Speaker
earth. And sometimes I think it does go a little deeper. Although, like I think Kim Newman points out in Nightmare Movies that Howling and the American Way for London both owe their existence to the advances in technology at the time. But I always think that there's always other interesting reasons to look at as well, you know.
00:43:33
Speaker
Yeah, because you don't just have to make a werewolf film. You could make anything. Well, yeah. And that's the point, you know, body horror films. Eventually we lose the werewolf in 1982 and then it becomes about.
00:43:45
Speaker
not only man turning into wolf, it becomes man turning into anything, like in video, a man turning into video recorder, where it becomes the thing where anything is possible or any of those kind of late David Cronenberg films like The Brood or something like that, where it doesn't deal with the archetype of the werewolf, which is this very well established figure. It deals with the
00:44:08
Speaker
inchoate possibility of change, that it could be anything. That's kind of the point about these transformation sequences. It's like halfway through the transformation sequences in the Howling and American Way Off London, it looks like they could become anything. It looks kind of simian at one point. It looks very strange and unformed.
00:44:32
Speaker
If I just go back to what we're saying about the transformation stuff and the look of the werewolf.
00:44:41
Speaker
you're talking about the simian aspects of it. And I know this, I can picture the shot, the straight on face, where this face is here instead of profile. It reminds me of the blending of some of the werewolf films that have been made in the last 10 years with films like, what was it called, Howl? Have you seen Howl when they're on the train? And it's more like, is it
00:45:06
Speaker
some kind of native people that are living in the wild? Is it genetic throwback? Is it werewolves? Is it some kind of folk thing as well? It's all becoming really mixed up now as it evolves. The werewolf has evolved so much more than just Lon Chaney Jr.
British vs American Werewolf Films
00:45:22
Speaker
Well, how is interesting because it's an English film and English werewolf films, I think they always, they're always more about the perhaps fairy tale element. So kind of the quintessential British werewolf film is Company of Wolves, which is this very symbolic, very Freudian interpretation of Andrew Carter's short story. And it doesn't have that
00:45:46
Speaker
social political element that I think a lot of the American films do. And Harold's kind of the same in Dog Soldiers as well. I think they're more about this idea that it's about like going off into the woods going to the wild and meeting something horrible there.
00:46:00
Speaker
whether the American werewolf films are more about the idea of werewolves coming into the city. It's like, what does it say about society we're in, you know? And isn't there a link between, in America, don't they link when to go in the werewolf in some, you know, I know it's probably appropriation from some, you know, some movies, but sorry, from some cultures, but often there's a very similar link between cannibal,
00:46:26
Speaker
I'm saying where we'll send the wendigo and in American movies, especially smaller independent ones. Yeah, I think I think yeah, if you go if you got north like Canada and far North America, you do get that kind of crossover period between these archetypal figures. And what the wendigo is kind of a very interesting
00:46:47
Speaker
archetype as well, because it's it's so confused, you see so many different interpretations, like Stephen King's wendigo in Pet Sematary, or the wendigos of the video game until dawn, or the actual film wendigo by Larry Fassbender. And they're all very different interpretations of what is kind of the same legend. I think that's probably a good place to start the first half of the episode. So thanks, Richard, we will take a quick break. And we'll join you a little bit later on in the podcast.
00:47:17
Speaker
Good stuff. Okay, thank you. Hello, SFF Chronicles. Here, a bit of a problem here. I reckon I must have developed into a werewolf. Because there was a full moon last Tuesday night and I woke up on Wednesday morning laying in the meerkat enclosure of the zoo. No memory the night before. And all I didn't choose tonight was drink a bottle of Bugfest and a few cans up in the house. And then we headed into Clannley's for the game. No, it was cloudy with a bit of drizzle on the way down, but not too bad for February.
00:47:43
Speaker
The only drink I had in Connolly's was a few cider and whiskey nail heads, five or six Dutch gold, a couple of spliffs and a tequila snake bite. Anyways, I reckon this guy must have cleared up when I was in there because when I went to head home I noticed the moon was as full as you can get. Thing is you see, something got at the neighbour's chickens last night and I can't be sure it wasn't me. And if it was me, I'd say there was a good chance it was down to the full moon.
00:48:06
Speaker
So would you have an antigen test for a werewolf? I was up in the chemist and they didn't have ant like that and they said to try ye. And can you let me know as soon as possible if you have them because lamb and season is coming up and I don't want to have to barricade myself into the house again. Hello, I'm Damaris Brown and this is The Judge's Corner where I talk about legal issues which we as writers need to know about and also I talk about aspects of the law which we can use in our stories.
00:48:37
Speaker
An often asked question on Crohn's, and not only by newcomers to writing, is whether it's possible to use real-life commodities and companies in a novel, or to base characters and locales on real people and places. The short answer is yes, we can, but there are some potential problems. In this talk, I will deal with the first and most obvious of them, defamation. When I talked about copyright, I gave the standard legal caveat.
00:49:05
Speaker
My talk dealt only in generalities, and anyone who had to take matters further would need to check with a local lawyer. That goes double for the issue of defamation, since there are vast differences as to how it is defined and dealt with across the world. In some countries, defamation is actually a crime, not merely a civil tort. In some, it's possible to defame the dead, while in other jurisdictions, an element of malice may be required for something to be defamatory.
00:49:33
Speaker
In this talk I'll again deal in generalities, with emphasis on the law of England and Wales, which is broadly similar to that in other Anglophone countries. But do take note that if you publish your books in different jurisdictions, the laws of those countries or states will also be relevant.
00:49:52
Speaker
And this talk is no substitute for definitive legal advice about a particular story published in a specific location, which includes or alludes to real life individuals or legal entities. But after that legalistic warning, a word of reassurance.
00:50:10
Speaker
Successful claims for defamation in relation to novels seem to be rare. Despite a good bit of searching, I've so far found only a couple of modern examples, and only one of those reach court under its own steam. Problems for authors tend to occur, perhaps inevitably, around memoirs and exposés. But while the risk is greater for them, the same principles apply to novels, and for that matter the blogs and tweets and any other posts in social media a novelist might use.
00:50:41
Speaker
First, some definitions. In English law, there is a distinction between two forms of defamation, slander and libel. Slander is usually thought of as something spoken, but it also covers, for instance, gestures, so is best considered as something transient or ephemeral, while libel is recorded, so includes not only written work, but also such things as broadcasts and social media posts. Not every country differentiates between the two, however.
00:51:11
Speaker
And since I'm mainly dealing here with novels, I won't go any deeper into the distinction either. As to deformation itself, getting a precise definition isn't easy in English law, since there isn't one definitive test. The 2013 Deformation Act itself doesn't even attempt to define it, so we're left with case law and precedent.
00:51:35
Speaker
Its origins lie in the importance of personal reputation. So an 1840 case said, defamation was a publication without justification or lawful excuse, which is calculated to injure the reputation of another by exposing him to hatred, contempt, or ridicule.
00:51:55
Speaker
By the 1930s, that definition was seen as far too narrow, and new ideas were added. So a defamatory statement was one which tends to lower a person in the estimation of right-thinking members of society, or one that tends to make a person as shunned and avoided, regardless of whether it implies any moral fault or character defect.
00:52:18
Speaker
These definitions are reflected in the legal code of Queensland Australia, which sums up defamation as any imputation concerning any person or any member of his family, whether living or dead, by which the reputation of that person is likely to be injured, or by which he is likely to be injured in his profession or trade, or by which other persons are likely to be induced to shun or avoid or ridicule or despise him.
00:52:48
Speaker
What these varying definitions have in common, though, is that it isn't enough if a statement annoys someone or injures his feelings. Bad manners and discourtesy aren't to be put on the same level as actionable wrongs. Which is all well and good in theory, but what about jokes and banter or personal insult? That border isn't always easy to define.
00:53:11
Speaker
as exemplified in a case brought by the actor and director, Stephen Berkoff, against the Times newspapers, and its then columnist, Julie Burchill. In one column, she described directors, specifically mentioning Mr. Berkoff, as hideously ugly people. And in a film review some months later, she said that a creature comparable to Frankenstein's monster was a lot like Stephen Berkoff, only marginally better looking.
00:53:40
Speaker
journalistic exaggeration for effect, you might think, which doesn't cross the line into defamation. And one of the Court of Appeal judges would agree with you. Unfortunately, for the Times and Julie Burchill, his two colleagues thought otherwise. And by that majority of two to one, the Court of Appeal confirmed that in the circumstances of the whole review, the comment went beyond banter and was indeed defamatory.
00:54:07
Speaker
But though the Deformation Act doesn't define what defamation is, it does confirm what it isn't. Namely, a statement is not defamatory unless its publication has caused, or is likely to cause, serious harm to the reputation of the claimant. And for an organisation that trades for profit, serious harm means serious financial loss.
00:54:32
Speaker
The act then helpfully goes on to confirm the defences which can be used in an action for defamation. And the one most likely to be of use for a novelist is truth. That is, where the defence can show that the imputation conveyed by the statement complained of is substantially true.
00:54:51
Speaker
Note that unlike in the US, whereas I understand it, the person claiming something is defamatory has to prove it's a lie. Here in England and Wales, the burden of proof is on the defence. The author or publisher must show the statement is accurate. An extreme example of what this can mean is the case of Irving against Penguin Books and Lipstadt.
00:55:16
Speaker
In her book, Denying the Holocaust, Deborah Lipstadt called Irving one of the most dangerous spokespersons for Holocaust denial. He promptly sued her and her publishers for libel.
00:55:29
Speaker
In order to prove their case, that he had indeed, for his own ideological reasons, persistently and deliberately misrepresented and manipulated historical evidence as regards the planned extermination of the Jews in Europe, Penguin Books engaged five expert witnesses, some of whom spent more than two years in research and analysis.
00:55:54
Speaker
But the precise truth of a statement is not by itself enough if innuendo or inferences which can be drawn from the context of the statement go beyond what is expressly said. A prime example of this is the case of two wags, Vardy and Mooney.
00:56:12
Speaker
For those fortunate enough not to have heard of these footballers' wives, Colleen Rooney was upset at the Sun newspaper revealing details of her private life which had come from her private Instagram account. She investigated, and over the course of some months she planted various false stories which duly appeared in the Sun, while at the same time she restricted access to these fake revelations until they could be seen by only one other account.
00:56:41
Speaker
With a drumroll and great to-do, Rooney announced to the world that the relevant account belonged to Rebecca Vardy. That bold statement has apparently never been contested by Vardy and her lawyers. Yet, notwithstanding its truth, the High Court has held that in the context of what else was written by Rooney at the time, the inherent implication
00:57:04
Speaker
The actual meaning of the sentence is that it was Vardy herself giving the stories to the sun, and that is defamatory. There are other defences to an action for defamation, such as its being a matter of public interest or the statement-maker having absolute or qualified privilege, but the only one which might ordinarily be useful to novelists is honest opinion, but that's bound about with technicalities who isn't something to rely upon.
00:57:33
Speaker
What certainly isn't a defence is to say, is fiction a work of imagination? This has recently been reiterated in the case concerning the Netflix series The Queen's Gambit, which follows the career of a fictional female chess player in the 1960s.
00:57:49
Speaker
A legal action has been brought against the company by the Georgian chess player, i.e. from the Republic of Georgia, not the US state, whose name I am about to mangle. So my apologies to her and any Georgians listening.
00:58:05
Speaker
In the series, a character refers to her by name and says she has never faced men in her career. Whereas in fact by 1968, when that scene is set, she had faced and beaten many male competitors.
00:58:20
Speaker
Netflix tried to get the case dismissed quickly on the base that the show was a work of fiction and artistic license was guaranteed under the First Amendment. But the judge refused their application, specifically stating that works of fiction are not immune from legal action if they disparage real people.
00:58:39
Speaker
Whether that specific untruth is actually defamatory is another issue, to be determined at trial. But the fact remains that Netflix can't shrug off responsibility for it just because the rest of the story is invented. That's an example of the obvious risk of having your characters interact with real-life people, something to watch out for if you deal in the old history kind of speculative fiction.
00:59:05
Speaker
But there's also a risk in basing your characters on real people, even if you seek to disguise them with different names. The two recent cases I found highlight this. The first case originated in a novel by Lady Colin Campbell called Empress Bianca, whose eponymous heroine has an eventful life, including four husbands. But she takes the shortcut to rich widowhood by murdering two of them.
00:59:31
Speaker
With the obvious exception of the murders, Bianca's life history rather too closely follows the real life of Mrs. Lily Safra, with 17 specific and rather distinctive heads of comparison.
00:59:43
Speaker
The novel was published in June 2005. Mrs Safra learned of it in early July, and although the publishers had originally dismissed the issue of defamation when approached by a newspaper, saying, we didn't have it read for libel, it's a novel, a work of fiction. By the 25th of July, they'd apologized and agreed a settlement, which included recalling and presumably pulping all the books and agreeing not to distribute more.
01:00:09
Speaker
Quite how much they paid Mrs Safra, if indeed damages were sought, I don't know, because the only public record of the agreement I can find is contained in the judgment of a separate legal case. The publishers might have folded as soon as they received a lawyer's letter, but Lady Collin was evidently made of sterner stuff, since she sued Mrs Safra for defamation and for inducing a breach of contract. Spoiler alert, she lost.
01:00:38
Speaker
The second case is much the same. This one comes from Georgia, the US state this time, not the country, and a novel by Heywood Smith called The Red Hat Club, which included a character called Susu, a middle-aged flight attendant whose marital life was rather full of drama.
01:00:55
Speaker
However, Susu was clearly based on the author's soon-to-be ex-friend, Vicki Stewart. There were two dozen close similarities between them, and she wasn't best pleased about it, since Susu was also a sexually promiscuous drunk. In this case, the publishers didn't fold, and the case went to court, where the jury agreed that Ms. Stewart had indeed been defamed, and as a result, awarded her damages of $100,000.
01:01:23
Speaker
which isn't peanuts, but also isn't nearly as generous as it sounds, nor quite the vindication Miss Stewart undoubtedly wanted, since her lawyers had been asking for millions of dollars. More to the point, she wasn't awarded the costs of the action. That is, she had to pay her lawyers out of her winnings, and since they'd been working for her for some years, I suspect she ended up well out of pocket.
01:01:49
Speaker
yet the defence also had to stamp up for its own legal costs as well as the award. So the only actual winners here were the lawyers, which is, perhaps to no one's surprise, very often the case in legal proceedings. So if you want to avoid making a defamation lawyer even richer than he already is, what can you do to ensure no one even thinks of suing you for libel? To find out, you'll have to listen to the final part of my talk on defamation.
01:02:26
Speaker
Hello, is that SSF Chronicles? I was up in the library and they said to give me a ring. I'm looking to get hold of some track and field records for werewolves. See, I just found out that the Paris 100m final is going to be under a full moon, and I was taking the given hour to go.
01:02:38
Speaker
I just don't know what sort of times werewolves normally do. Anyway, I rang the Olympic committee and asked them, I says, can you put a dolphin in a hundred meters freestyle? And they said, no, the only animal you're allowed in the Olympics is a horse. I said, right, so what about werewolves? And I'm up. So I'm taking that as you're allowed. The problem is, I'm not sure now what sort of times werewolves normally do, were it, they normally take some kind of bite in a worm and have it or a chain or something. You might get back to me if you can. Thanks, lads.
01:03:08
Speaker
We have two challenge winners for you this month. The winner of the February 75 word challenge, which was won by Riva33 with his entry a better yesterday. And the winner from the January 300 word challenge, which was our very own Christopher with his piece third player. Congratulations to both of them. And here are both excellent entries read by Christopher. A better yesterday by Riva33.
01:03:34
Speaker
As I lifted the cup to my lips, something in the smell, that citrus tang, gave me pause. Across the table, Dr. Cohen arched an eyebrow. Yes, John, something? I frowned. No, it was oranges, not lemons. From China. And a girl. A girl's. Suzanne? He smiled. Excellent. Just enough tangential recall. Are you impressed? It's an implant. But I could have sworn.
01:04:02
Speaker
And all the other memories will be just as real, John. Sign here. In a Devon Chapel, surrounded by trees pressing so close the quality of light inside takes on the aspect of being underwater. We wait.
01:04:22
Speaker
I've always waited. She did things in her own time. This moonlight wedding was testimony enough. Eventually, the organ swells and she appears at the narthex framed by notes. Even over its blast you can feel the intake of breath, an anticipatory silence. There she is, walking to her appointment with a man her parents are delighted she's marrying.
01:04:46
Speaker
I get the idea she's not human, but a translation of the Gospels in human form. Female Messiah. She ignores me. I squat, malingering with unfinished business, in the backmost pew, hidden from the judgement of the congregation's earthbound eyes.
01:05:06
Speaker
As she passes, I recall I always considered her taller than I, even though the reverse is true. But the dress that seems somehow upholstered upon her, rather than worn, towers above me, its crepe grey folds as dramatic as the white cliffs.
01:05:22
Speaker
Moving imperceptibly, as if only my expectation defines movement, she proceeds from nave to nave. I tell myself her legato is born from reluctance. She has no love for him, the safe bet, the accountant. What does he know of her needs? What does he know of the touch that electrifies it just below her ear, or how she wriggled with delight under my fingertips? Can he sit with her in silence in the same room without the need for trivial talk, in a love that transcends words?
01:05:54
Speaker
It takes a woman to know a woman. I hang on her words, dreading thee, I do. Hanging on her words, a sick pun. As the bouquet is thrown, I return to the lament the keening wind blows over my grave. Hello, SSF Chronicles.
01:06:22
Speaker
I was on the internet and it seems ye might be the people that need to chat it. I think I'm dead. I was out last Saturday night and was bitten in the back of Dudley Park by a wolf. It was a full moon so I went to the late night cinema to watch Power of the Night in Bangkok and that's when I turned into a werewolf. Well not so much a werewolf, more of a Jack Russell Terrier. And if you're like me you probably hated school but love talking to dogs so you know that was grand. It's just there's another full moon coming up on Friday and I'm gonna get fired if it happens again.
01:06:51
Speaker
So I'd appreciate if you could get back to me with the number of a doctor living in the Triangula galaxy. Someone was telling me they have extremely advanced medical people in that part of outer space. It's just I wouldn't mind being brought back to life before the weekend. Thanks.
01:07:09
Speaker
Welcome back to Con's Cast. Chris and I are here with Richard Shepherd, the host of the Constant Reader podcast. And I was hoping, Richard, you could tell us a little bit about what's going on with the Constant Reader podcast. It's been going for about two years now and it's gone from strength to strength. So I was hoping you could tell us a little bit about what's going on at the moment, what you got planned for the next year or so.
01:07:32
Speaker
Sure, I'd love to. Well, it's a monthly podcast and every month it's a deep dive into either a novel by Stephen King or an adaptation of his work. We started out just speaking to academics, people like Mark Yankovic, who's wrote a great deal of books on horror.
01:07:49
Speaker
Richard Hand, who's an expert on sound in horror and sound design. And then the COVID pandemic hit, and I was kind of a bit lost about what to do because I couldn't go into the studio, I couldn't talk to people. But I kind of realized if you had a microphone, you could just email people, people who wouldn't be able to come into the studio, otherwise just ask them if they were doing anything. So
01:08:13
Speaker
We spoke to filmmakers like Tom Holland, who directed Fright Nights and The Langoliers and Thinner. We spoke to Richard Chisma, who's co-written a couple of books with Stephen King, the Gwendy novels. There's a fine novelist in his own right. People like Paul Tremblay, who your listeners may know from books like The Cabin at the End of the World or A Head Full of Ghosts. People like, I would never meet in my regular life, but because everybody was locked down with nothing to do,
01:08:43
Speaker
now had plenty of time to kind of answer my question, so it's been lovely. And ever since then, we've kind of capitalized on that and moved basic to an online-only podcast. And yeah, it's going from strengths to things. We've had Dan on a couple of times, talking about his favorites, Needful Things and Christine, which was wonderful. I really enjoy those chats. And yeah, we've got a pretty good slate coming up next year, so I can't give too much away.
01:09:09
Speaker
But no, the things that things are looking very good. You can't give us a you can't give us a little scoop. Well, I'm a little kronskast scoop. Well, I don't know if it's really a scoop, but I'm speaking to Stuart O'Nan, who wrote a great book called The Night Country and wrote a book called The Speed Queen about Stephen King and also has written books with Stephen King about baseball. So I'm quite interested to talk to him. We're probably going to be talking to the Reverend Peter Laws again, who is
01:09:39
Speaker
a Baptist minister who also writes a column for the Fourteen Times. He reviews films and he hosts a couple of podcasts of his own, the Creepy Cove Community Podcast and Frightful, both of which I think would be very much of interest to anybody who enjoys good horror, so I can recommend that very highly.
01:09:58
Speaker
Yes, I remember him. Which book did he cover? Cycle of the Wolf. That's right. Yeah, well, that's very apt, isn't it? He was a very good guest, I remember. Oh, he's a writer of fiction and nonfiction. He's read a great book called The Frighteners about the fascination we have with horror and wrote a series of fiction books about kind of a supernatural investigator, which is I recommend you pick up.
01:10:26
Speaker
very good. Well, I'm waiting for Duma Key. That is one of my favorite Stephen King books. And I've just, I will be shutting everything listening to that. Honestly, I have, I have a few podcasts that I'm absolutely obsessed with. One of one of them that I'm always going on about on Crohn's is Constant Reader podcast. Your podcast is so enjoyable. And every month when I get the notification, I'm like, please let it be Duma Key. I'm still waiting.
01:10:55
Speaker
Well, Christopher, I don't want to ambush you here, but would you be willing to come along and talk about Doo McKee? I would love to. I would love to. We talked in the past about maybe a Buick 8, because nobody likes that but me. Nobody likes from a Buick 8 except me and my sister. I do actually have somebody lined up for a Buick 8. I can't reveal it too much because it's not confirmed yet, but no, I'll pencil in for Doo McKee because I love that one too.
01:11:22
Speaker
There we go. Kron's cast is bringing people together. This is the thing about the podcast that Chris and I have figured out is that it's in this strange new world that we were plunged a couple of years ago, it's a way that you can
01:11:46
Speaker
bring people together in a relatively easy way. You've managed to do it. Well, you were lucky enough to have access to a professional studio at the beginning of the Constant Reader podcast, but suddenly finding yourself at home, you think, okay, I grabbed myself a microphone.
01:12:03
Speaker
And I can still do it, and I can still do it to the absolute A grade quality that it was before and reach the same amount of people. And it's interesting, when we were speaking to Steve Palmer a little while ago on Cron's cast, he was doing a bit of work on the damage that social media can do.
01:12:26
Speaker
And I think he was thinking very much along the lines of Facebook, where the flow of information is highly unregulated, and Twitter, which seems to appeal to the worst base impulses of people when they're on the internet. And you've got 280 characters to write down your feelings. Go. And you're entering into a room full of people who are already having an argument and screaming at the top of your voice.
01:12:55
Speaker
It's not conducive to nuance. But then on the other side, you've got something like this set up, which allows us to have a long-form conversation about something and really go into the weeds together and have a dance about and think about the information and think about the film, the text, the book that we're interested in and we're deeply enthusiastic about. And we can maybe draw something out of that that we didn't have before. And then we can circulate it.
01:13:24
Speaker
all the people out there who are listening and as an example of how the technology can be used, which is still social media, that how it can be used for good.
01:13:34
Speaker
No, absolutely. That's a very good point. I think it's interesting that 10 years ago, 15 years ago, podcasts were just coming onto the scene. I think there was this idea in society that everything had to be shortened and that our attention spans were getting shorter and shorter. Like I said, you had Twitter and things like Facebook, which would limit the amount you could actually say to people, which would limit purposefully
01:14:00
Speaker
what you could actually get across. And the idea that podcasts come along, and there's no limits, you can go on for as long as you like. And people will still listen to it. People will listen to Joe Rogan talking for four hours about cooking elk meat or something like that. And there is a market for this. And you know, I love that idea, because it's, it's at once, I think people must be after having
01:14:26
Speaker
Twitter and your micro bite-sized pieces of information which might not be information at all, they're sort of thirsty for a big steak. And the podcast is a big steak. Yeah, I think that's... I'll look at something like...
01:14:43
Speaker
Netflix where they've broken down a film into an eight-hour series now. You can tell a story for as long as it takes to tell that story. You don't have to squeeze everything into a film or one episode of a television show. It defines its own length. This thing is both wonderful because it does allow a great deal of depth to be allowed to a topic and also quite terrible as well because it means anybody can start a podcast and
01:15:14
Speaker
During lockdown, I would go on like podcasting sites or subreddits about podcasting. And there'd be so many posts with people saying, you know, I want to start a podcast. And then the next sentence would be, I don't know what it's about. And then it was like, oh, it's just me and my friend talking for three hours. And that was always dread hard work. It's just too white. There's a lot of that out there. Yeah, there's a lot of that out there. And it's the
01:15:43
Speaker
It's instructive that it's so easy to access and it's so easy to set up. All you need is an internet connection and off you go. You don't even need a studio-level microphone. We try to use decent equipment for Kronskast and I know you do as well with Constant Reader, but you don't need A-grade equipment. But you do need to have some sort of structure and I think
01:16:08
Speaker
We should apply the same principle. I'm talking as writers here. When we're writing, we have to be quite diligent about structure. We have to be quite diligent about the quality of the prose or the quality of the product that we're trying to capture on the paper or on the screen. If you're doing something like a podcast or any sort of online activity, then why wouldn't you
01:16:32
Speaker
Want to to transpose that that pursuit of excellence or you know at least the aspiration To be as excellent as it can be and that's that's I mean that's a driving force for what we're doing We're trying to make it as good as it can be and try and be as reflective of the cons community As well, which is why we have the challenge winners as we as we had read out a little bit earlier in Europe in the episode and it's it makes a difference when
01:17:03
Speaker
People can smell we said we said this on episode zero the sort of taste session people can smell when you're not doing it right and they'll quickly switch off so we hope that we're doing it right and. The cream tends to rise to the top and i think if people are just getting together with their mates and talking they'll quickly run out of things to say because it's not.
01:17:23
Speaker
It's not down the pub. You need some structure. It's a fine line. I think there's an element of escapism with podcasts, not necessarily for the host, which I'm sure there is, but for the audience, for me, I'm watching whatever horror film, I've watched it, it's over, but I want to keep talking about it or keep thinking about it. If I tune into a podcast, I can do that, but I don't want to listen to Three Mates ramble on
01:17:48
Speaker
about it without any kind of depth. I don't need some big critical theory stuff. I just need... Some depth and some detail. Yeah, just something a little less vacuous and considered.
01:18:05
Speaker
Oh, yeah. I mean, you look at what the most popular podcasts are. It's something like Dan Carlin's Hardcore Histories. Have you ever heard this one? It's it's literally a man just giving a lecture on his own for four hours about history. And it's incredible. It's wonderful. You can tell it's well researched. It's very basic setup. It's just him talking of sound effects and stuff like that. But it just sounds right. It sounds like you what you want to know. It's the facts. It's this is what you want to hear. You know, and it's that's that's quite incredible. And I think
01:18:35
Speaker
We're going to see a lot more things like podcast films, which is quite a recent development, like an hour and a half podcast film. And again, the mini series concept recently, we've had
01:18:47
Speaker
Stephen King's short story, Strawberry Spring, turned into an eight-episode miniseries, and with Hollywood actors and production values. But it's an audio drama. It's the same as listening in the 50s to the inner sanctum. It's the same concept, but it's just modern. It's just now. People love it. People respond to it. I love the idea that people still have
01:19:09
Speaker
a great hunger for long-form pieces of entertainment, whether it's fiction or nonfiction or whatever it is, but they have a hunger for digging down into the weeds and they're not actually that interested. People in general get a bad press.
01:19:25
Speaker
in that we've got short attention spans. We do have short attention spans and the reason for that is evolutionary because we need to be distracted by something because something could come out of the bush and eat us and the wolf or something. So you need to have the ability to be distracted. But the methods of distraction are being orchestrated to the nth degree now. So it's nice to actually have a long form production which
01:19:54
Speaker
obviates the possibility of being distracted and lets you relax into a topic because we're all enthusiastic. We all have our particular areas of where we're an aficionado or where we're an enthusiast or whatever it might be. So we want to be immersed in that world. We want to find out as much as we can find out so that then we can relate it to people in real life.
01:20:22
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, that's a wonderful point because it's such a bespoke thing, the podcast. Whatever your interest is, there's probably going to be a podcast about it and you're probably going to listen to hours of it just because it's so niche and because it's so tailored to what you do. And going back to what you were saying, it was kind of a grassroots movement by people who wanted better content. It's people thinking, well, we don't want like a half hour sitcom. I want to like just
01:20:50
Speaker
get out there and talk about something real. I don't want people thinking that I have this low attention span, so corporations cater for that. I can actually give something else back to people. It's a wonderful time to be doing podcasting, absolutely. I've only heard the first episode of yours, but I really enjoyed it. I'm very much looking forward to hearing more
01:21:12
Speaker
I mean, we're still pretty young. We've only got a handful of episodes under our belts at the time of recording. Yeah, I think only one is released, but we've got a few more in the pipeline. And it's very interesting that as soon as you open the door to people and say, look, we've got this thing. It's a small
01:21:39
Speaker
It's a small program, but we're trying to do it as well as we can. And do you want to be on it? And do you want to come and be involved? And it's amazing the amount of goodwill out there from people who are in the community. I mean, we're quite unashamed about servicing the SFF Chronicles community, which is the world's largest science fiction fantasy community. It's an old school forum.
01:22:02
Speaker
And it's got over 20,000 members on it now. So it's a huge community of all sorts of different people. It's got a strong writing sub-community and culture embedded into it. It's got people who are into films, history, science and technology, books, literature, the whole spectrum. And there's a lot of goodwill in and around the community so that when you're putting something like this together,
01:22:29
Speaker
People want to support it. People want to get involved. They want to come on and be a guest. It's exciting, people. And that excites me. And I'm sure it does you as well, Chris, doesn't it? Yeah, I want them to maybe shift into the 21st century. Who could you mean? Some of them don't like, no, punk-ass, no, go for it. But yeah, I mean, I can be quite parochial as well, so provincial.
01:23:00
Speaker
you know, on certain things. But yeah, I think a podcast is something that can not make or break you, but you can accelerate it if you do the do's and don'ts right. If you do the do's and don'ts wrong, it is just like pulling teeth, listening to it, or you know, or participating in one as well, I suppose.
01:23:24
Speaker
That's interesting. How do you kind of explain, not explain, but if you were speaking to somebody on your forum and they said, Oh, I don't see the podcast. What's a podcast? What would you kind of, what would you tell them? How would you describe it? I would just say it's an on demand radio show.
01:23:39
Speaker
That's good. I mean, I don't I don't, I don't know if there is a definition. But radio can be, you know, this podcast with music in between this podcast where they're just writing reading fiction, there's podcasts like this, this podcast, like the historian when you were talking about, sorry, radio shows like that rather, and drama,
01:24:00
Speaker
So yeah, I think it's just something you have a bit more control over. I've always wanted to listen to the radio. This is a really lame excuse, but I've always wanted to listen to the radio.
Radio Habits and Favorite Podcasts
01:24:10
Speaker
But my radio needed batteries and I always to remember the settings and I never wanted to pay for batteries. So I've never listened to the radio apart from Trevor Nelson on a Saturday.
01:24:23
Speaker
So what American American listeners will not know who Jeffrey Nelson is. You have to put a show note in about that one. So what podcast do you actually kind of listen to? What are your what are your favorites? I mean, is a part of mine, obviously. Well, apart from yours, I listened to the Faculty of Horror, which is an academic feminist podcast with Andrew Supersati and Alex West. Very cool. That is incredibly well researched.
01:24:50
Speaker
And I'm ashamed to say, I do listen to both yours and their podcasts with a, how should I feel about this? Sort of going into it thinking, I don't really know how I feel about thinner. So I'm going to listen to that podcast and they'll tell me what to think. I know it's awful and I'm sort of relinquishing all responsibility, but I really do love those kinds of podcasts. And then there's a Fangoria one with Eric and Scott.
01:25:16
Speaker
uh no that's the king cast um yes you know that one yeah i've been listening to that uh the one about the shining series that didn't happen um and throwing my slippers at the wall in frustration don't forget the hp podcraft as well oh yes the hp podcraft is phenomenal um chad fifa and chris lackey amazing and also very funny and then but then also i listened to uh welcome to night veil which is 15 20 minutes of
01:25:43
Speaker
you know, enjoyable, mad, weird fiction. And I'd like to give a shout out to the evolution of horror podcast with Mike Muncer, who was also on the Constant Reader podcast. That's really, really interesting stuff. And what's the other one? Oh, a podcast to the curious. Yes. The M.R. James theme podcast. Although they've really slowed down, haven't they?
01:26:08
Speaker
Yeah, after they've kind of done all the M.R. James stories, they're reaching for more content and it's just, it's getting a bit tricky to find. Yeah, they did the mezzotint from Christmas, but I was hoping they would
01:26:20
Speaker
you know, weird fiction, especially, it's got such a wide definition, they could branch out in the way that the HP podcast have, in terms of choosing other stories and other, you know, other authors. But I think, MI James is so specific, he has such a specific flavor, that it's, you know, you have to be canny there.
01:26:44
Speaker
I like the evolution of horror as well. There have been some great podcasts early on in the season. I love they had
01:26:53
Speaker
uh, James Swanton from, um, he plays, yeah, he plays a lot of, um, a lot of the like Frankenstein's monster or plays beasts, the beast as he calls it. And he was talking about Haxson and the cabinet of Dr. Caligari and, um, Conrad Veidt and German expressionism. And you just, I just got completely switched onto that, you know, so that the things that you get from a podcast can be so unexpected. Um, absolutely. Yeah.
Podcasting as a Medium for Writers
01:27:26
Speaker
The one thing I've, or one of the things that I've taken from this is, it's quite a punk medium, isn't it? It's very, it's got a very do-it-yourself ethos. You know, you can get up, you can do it, which I guess anything online to an extent has. But I first had the idea to run with with Cron's cast to sort of create a sort of a self-publishing network.
01:27:54
Speaker
and talk about writing and publishing and it sort of grew out of there and it sort of metastasized into something a little bit bigger and encompassing more of a magazine element with all the other things and features that we have on Kronskast. But it was born out of an idea that
01:28:13
Speaker
You have the tools within yourself, or you have the opportunity within yourself, or the possibility even within yourself, to try and get whatever it is you're doing off the ground. And you have these wonderful tools, the ones that we're using. We use Zencaster, but several others are available.
01:28:36
Speaker
If you've got a focus and a vision, then you can use these tools to really support what it is you want to do. And I think a lot of particularly writers out there, they feel a little bit helpless because it's like screaming into the void. Trying to write the bloody thing is hard enough. But then when you actually try and maybe you're looking for representation through an agent, maybe you're looking to approach a small press directly or
01:29:06
Speaker
get a publisher once you have an agent or maybe you're looking to self-publish, so there are various routes that you can take, all of them are ridiculously hard. I mean, self-publishing is slightly easier, but then actually getting it noticed is ridiculously difficult.
01:29:23
Speaker
doing something along the lines of a podcast and it doesn't need to be a podcast but a podcast is just a good example is that's what we're talking about. There are things that you can do to increase your visibility, yes that's one thing, but also
01:29:45
Speaker
improve your own network and improve your own skills and improve yourself and open yourself up to new possibilities. I think a lot of writers get stuck in the groove of, I must traditionally publish, I must
01:29:58
Speaker
Get myself an agent I must self publish as soon as I can and then I don't know what to do but I must do one of these things that actually if you engage with the with the wide world and it doesn't really matter whether it's a podcast or something else but it opens up new opportunities and and that's what
01:30:16
Speaker
That's what we're finding even in the early days through this we're getting to talk to writers, we're getting to talk to publishers and we may get to talk to one or two literary agents as well who give us so much more information and feedback and knowledge and expertise about the wider world which you don't get if you're just sort of
01:30:41
Speaker
like Sisyphus rolling the boulder up the hill all the time and all you can see is the boulder in front of you but there are other ways of approaching it and I love the fact that a podcast or another medium can do that and expose you to all these different world views and
01:30:57
Speaker
and expertise and areas of knowledge. Oh yeah, I don't think we should underestimate the effect podcasts are going to have on culture. I mean, more podcasts were downloaded last year than things were streamed on Netflix and Amazon Prime put together. Really? Oh yeah, switch on the news at the moment to kind of see that podcasts are, you know, they're touchstones for culture. It's Joe Rogan versus Neil Young because of a podcast. These things happen.
01:31:27
Speaker
Barack Obama, he chooses to go on Mark Maron's show rather than do like 60 Minutes. Like you say, it's a punk thing, but it's getting really ingrained in culture. And not every new TV show, but a lot of new TV shows, they'll release a companion podcast at the moment in the way they used to release.
01:31:48
Speaker
I get channel four used to do like a companion TV show, podcasts are becoming quite integral to pretty much everything we do. And I think it's writing very well. So I'm just saying yes, because it's because it's so democratized.
Podcasting Tips: Dos and Don'ts
01:32:03
Speaker
And, you know, it's, it's not that it doesn't suffer from the gatekeeping that certain other things do. What would your do's and don'ts be as somebody who has a well established podcast, what would your do's and don'ts be for anybody who would want to start a podcast?
01:32:17
Speaker
Well, I think we've covered the biggest do, and that is do have something to talk about, do have a structure. I mean, do you listen to Komodo and Mayo, the film review show? Occasionally, yeah. Yeah, well, they listen to it because it's a film review show, but they also like the personalities, they like the banter, they like the chemistry between the two people. So that becomes like a secondary concern. But it can't just be two people talking about nothing.
01:32:47
Speaker
That doesn't really work ever, I think. So make sure it's about something and make sure it has structure. Make sure you're interviewing somebody. You have questions and you have good questions and I appreciate that. That's obviously well thought out and very good. Secondly, sound quality really is a big deal. It shouldn't be, but it is.
01:33:06
Speaker
If you're listening to a podcast in the first couple of minutes or so, you can't really hear what they're saying or it's too loud or the sound effects are too loud, then you're not going to listen to it no matter how good it is. And thirdly, promote it, promote it wherever you can. I mean, I don't Facebook or Twitter, but I Instagram and I
01:33:29
Speaker
go on other people's podcasts like this and I talk about my work. I mean, that's a great way of advertising is to go on other people's podcasts. Because as you say, it's such an interesting community. Well, there's a network and there's a community in pain podcasting as well. Oh, yeah. And it's all interconnected. I speak to Steph McKenna of the Thirst podcast, Mike Munster of Evolution of Horror. Other podcasts, it's a great avenue for people finding out about your stuff because
01:33:57
Speaker
Their audience is probably going to be your audience. You know, it's very, like I say, it's very tailored to the individual. And also try and be as regular as possible. I had to skip a month over Christmas and I really felt the, I felt the pain of doing that.
01:34:13
Speaker
Yeah, I started to worry, actually. I recorded an interview with a great guy called Evan Lamp, who's the host of a hundred pages podcast, which is about weird fiction. And unfortunately, the technology was just against us both times. We tried to record it and it just didn't work. So I had to give up on that. But yeah, that was kind of a shame. And also, yeah, it's good to
01:34:40
Speaker
have like a like a like a tale thing like at the end of the podcast I always ask my guests what are you reading at the moment and what's a book you would recommend to everybody just because it's nice to have those traditions those rituals like you guys have like the judge which I think is right
01:34:56
Speaker
love the judge. That's a great sequence. And you're going to say don't send her anything for critique because she will destroy it. And also the little skits and the sketches. I love those. It kind of like say it breaks up that that long form chat. And I think that's a really good way of doing it. Just are you consistent? Yeah. Thanks very much. Well, it's funny, you should mention those tail questions that I always ask at the end, because
Book Recommendations and Episode Wrap-Up
01:35:26
Speaker
Well, Chris, I said what I want to start doing on these podcasts, because in the podcast, I enjoy they do this is ask what people's favorite book is, or they're, you know, depending on what they're talking about, film or book, and what they're reading at the moment, which is very similar to your Stephen King origins question on your podcast. So I'd like to ask you what you're currently reading? And what is required reading?
01:35:55
Speaker
Currently, I am reading a book called Shadow Play by Joseph O'Connor. It's a fictionalized account of the life of Bram Stoker falling in with Henry Irving and running the Lyceum Theatre in the 1880s around the time of Jack the Ripper. It's beautifully written. It's about friendship. It's about repression. It's about
01:36:20
Speaker
Gothic, it's him finding the idea of Dracula in the streets of London and Dublin at this time, and all these little things that chip away at him and make him create this incredible work of art at the end.
01:36:35
Speaker
a book that I'd recommend to everybody. Well, Salem's Lot is probably the easy answer to that one. It's my favorite, Stephen King, and I think it's beautifully written. It's both a great horror story and a great slice of life.
01:36:51
Speaker
drama, the sequences in Salem's Lot that are just called The Town. Oh, he goes, the minutiae of the people's lives and their petty sins and their little victories and their their likes and their hates. It's just it's beautifully observed characters, even outside of genre fiction. It's it's it's just a such a beautifully written book. Thank you. I appreciate that. I knew I was just suspecting Salem's Lot.
01:37:20
Speaker
But I'm glad it wasn't something I haven't read so I could go. I could probably get some more obscure. I could probably find something. No, no, no. No, we like Stephen King. Good. Well, you're going to be on my podcast soon, Christopher. So I'm looking forward to that. I'm looking forward to your reading has come true. Yeah, absolutely. I'll be on my fourth read of it. Nice. OK, thank you.
01:37:48
Speaker
Wonderful. Well, Richard, it's been an absolute blast talking to you as we knew it would be. My pleasure. Thanks so much for dropping by. And hopefully maybe we'll see you again sometime. Certainly you and Chris will. And maybe we'll see you around the Kronskast way as well in the future. I'd love that. Thank you.
01:38:10
Speaker
This episode of Kron's Cast was brought to you by Dan Jones and Christopher Bean, and our special guest Richard Shepard. Additional content was provided by Damaris Brown, Brian Sexton and Martin Reaver. Special thanks to Brian Turner and the staff at Kron's, and don't forget to sign up to the world's largest science fiction and fantasy community at sffchronicles.com.
01:38:32
Speaker
Join us next month when we'll be joined by the author Stephen Cox to take a deep dive into a slice of classic swords and sorcery for its libres, swords and devilry.
01:39:55
Speaker
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