The Lure of The Wolfen and Rocktoberfest

Very excited to be back on The Projection Booth podcast this time discussing Michael Wadleigh's Wolfen with Mike White and motherfucking Stephen Graham Jones. Seriously, if there were one person I would choose to listen to pontificate on werewolves in general, nevermind one with ties to American Indian lore, it would be Jones.

Why him? Well, the first time I saw Wolfen was only a matter of weeks after reading his wonderful Arkansas werewolf crime novel Mongrels. I didn't have any preconceived notions of Wolfen outside of expecting wolves and the whole Indian connection sent me scurrying to Google Stephen Graham Jones and Wolfen for connections where I discovered he'd recently introduced an Alamo Draft House screening of the film in Denver. Fuck that sounds like a great event.

Anyway, very pleased just for the chance to listen to this episode let alone participate in it. I rewatched the film a couple of times the week before recording it and my admiration for the movie only grew. I also read Whitley Strieber's source novel The Wolfen and watched Philippe Mora's adaptation of Strieber's non-fiction book Communion.

Having now read The Wolfen and seeing how greatly the film strays from the source material I find it remarkable that Strieber's three adapted works, Communion, Wolfen and Tony Scott's feature debut The Hunger, each made by different filmmakers in separate sub-genres of horror, all achieve such striking heights of style that maximize the potential inherent within the material.

Anyway, tune in for that conversation here.

And if you're looking for more spooky-ass podcast shit you can also listen to me yap my trap on The Projection Booth about Brad Anderson's Session 9.

Man... thinking back to the day I recorded that Session 9 episode and it was also the day of the N@B *Pumpkin Spice Edition and... it was such a great event and I was so sick that day. Soooooo sick. It kills me to think that I didn't have more energy to pump into those amazing readers, because it doesn't matter how much I give them they always give me back more.

I was thinking about it because fuckin Fred Venturini read at that event and I think it's the last time I saw him and since then I've read a new book by him (that's not out) and he'd got a brand new book he's promoting, Escape of Light (St. Louis area folks can find him at Barnes & Noble in Fairview Heights on Saturday from 4-7pm).

Lookit that crew, man. Since that night Jessica Leonard has announced the sale of her debut novel Antioch (which she read from at the event) to Perpetual Motion Machine, S. L. Coney and (N@B veteran) Richard Thomas have announced their new venture; Storyville Studio.

Josh Woods' released the collection O Monstrous World!, Seth Ferranti has been keeping the content coming with multiple film projects and Gorilla Convict Publications, Hoping we get a new novel from Kea Wilson soon and Sarah Jilek joined N@B star Tawny Pike in making the Stiletto Heeled issue of Switchblade Magazine such a fucking beast. Get on that shit if you haven't yet.

Will we ever have another N@B-STL event?

I dunno. Maybe. I love 'em and they've... caught on? and that's very cool and gratifying, but honestly they're exhausting for me to put together and I've got other things I'm focusing on for the moment.

I'm super fond of the crew that's come through St. Louis doing the event - I'm proud to think we may have boosted a worthy signal or two and I'm floored by power and raw fucking talent that we saw at those events.

If you dig the same things I do - and if you'd like to support them, let me encourage you that even a single-sentence review left on a website (Amazon, B&N.com, Goodreads etc.) helps boost the signal of very worthy folk whom I guarantee appreciate it very much. Hell, a tweet or facebook or blog post do good things too.

So spread some love for recent releases by N@B alum like Laura Benedict's The Stranger Inside, Max Booth III's Carnivorous Lunar Activities, William Boyle's A Friend is a Gift You Give Yourself, Hilary Davidson's One Small Sacrifice, Sean Doolittle's Kill Monster, Jake Hinkson's Dry County, John Hornor Jacobs' A Lush & Seething Hell, Matthew McBride's End of the Ocean, Anthony Neil Smith's The Cyclist, John F.D. Taff's The Fearing, Fred Venturini's Escape of Light, Josh Woods' O Monstrous World!

I've been enjoying participating in Daily Grindhouse's Rocktoberfest 2019. Every day on the site they've been featuring pieces about horror movies with strong musical components as well as having multiple folks answer questions about music in horror films. I wrote about Agnieszka Smoczynska's wonderful 2015 Mermaid monster musical The Lure. Or you can click here to find out my favorite 90s horror soundtrack (pop songs, not score) and here for my favorite use of a pop song in a horror movie. Right here I talk about my favorite performance from a musician in a horror film and tomorrow I'll answer the question: What's your favorite John Carpenter score? It's been fun participating along with Grindhouse folks like Jon Abrams, Rob Dean, Matt Wedge, Stephanie Crawford, Jeremy Lowe, Alejandra Gonzalez and a whole bunch more.