Episode 031 : Nightbreed Past, Present, and Future with Michael Plumides
José and Ryan talk with Michael Plumides, Author, Producer, Screenwriter, Analyst and Consultant for Morgan Creek Productions. We learned lots of good stuff, and even some cool things about his book, Kill the Music, his history with the band GWAR (Ryan geeked out a little bit) and his web series Ghost Trek. See the full post for links and show notes.
Show Notes:
GWAR : Phallus in Wonderland, Dave Brockie’s Whargoul
Michael’s interview with Jeff Bridges : http://michaelplumides.wordpress.com
Tate Steinseik Art : http://www.illwilled.com/
The Morality Squad, by GWAR, 1992
Theme Song by Colin Lacativa
Transcript Below
DANHAUSER: Hi, this is the Clive Barker podcast, episode 31, past, present and future of Nightbreed with Michael Plumides. So Michael Plumides is a consultant to Morgan Creek. He’s also an author, producer, screenwriter, and, for Morgan Creek he’s an analyst. So this was really fun and informative episode to do. Michael shared a lot of stuff with us, including some tidbits about the Nightbreed TV show that people didn’t know before. So that’s pretty cool. And he talks about the role of 20th century Fox and Morgan Creek in what happened with the theatrical cut of the movie. He talked about the infamous thing that happened at his nightclub with GWAR that precipitated the events of the movie Phallus in Wonderland that GWAR did. So if you’re familiar with that, that’s pretty cool. And so there’s some other cool stuff that we didn’t get a chance to talk about, but he did an interview with Jeff Bridges fairly recently, and that’s on his blog. This is episode 31 of the Clive Barker podcast with Jose Leitao and I’m Ryan Danhauser. And Enjoy. This is the episode 31 of the Clive Barker Podcast with Michael Plumides.
PLUMIDES: Plumides. That’s The Greek pronunciation is Plu-Meedes. And so, so we just Kinda say it with a southern accent. Plumides.
DANHAUSER: And you’re an author, producer, screenwriter, analyst and consultant for Morgan Creek.
PLUMIDES: That’s correct.
DANHAUSER: And as an author, you wrote a book called Kill The Music in 2009, right?
PLUMIDES: 2009? That’s correct. Well, yeah, I wrote it in 2000 actually. But yeah, it was published in 2009, but I started writing back when MySpace was in its hayday. I was writing some of these ideas that I had. They were basically short stories about some of my experiences owning a nightclub and in rock and roll, and college radio. I had written some short stories on MySpace and I have this deeply disturbed following you know, like a hundred reads of the stories or so every time I posted one. So I thought maybe I’ll take some of these and I’ll weave them together and maybe write a book. And I was originally going to call the book. “The Day the Music Died”, you know, the connection to that song — I didn’t want it to sound like it was some sixties opus. So I was trying to think of some kind of clever name that makes a statement about censorship. And incidentally, the nightclub opened in 1988. It was closed in 1990 after the infamous GWAR show of September of 1990. It made national news.
DANHAUSER: Can you remind us what happened there?
PLUMIDES: Well, it was a tumultuous time for music in the ’80s, coming out of the Raegan administration. We had the Parent Music Resource Center and you had the music ratings hearings in like ’85 or ’86, ’87. Then there was the whole federal funding for the arts — John Maplethorpe incident where they shut down an art gallery featuring some portraits or photography by John Maplethorpe, and he had a bullwhip shoved up his rectum and one of the photographs.
LEITAO: Oh, I remember that. Yeah.
PLUMIDES: Jesse Helms was from North Carolina, Fritz Hollings from South Carolina. I went to University of South Carolina. So there was this, this unholy triumvirate between Fritz Hollings, the senator from South Carolina, Jesse Helms from North Carolina in the PMRC (Parent Music Resource Center), all working in cohesion to you know basically censor music ,and there was also 2 Live Crew at the time — 2 Live Crew, “As Nasty As They Wanna Be” –, they had arrested a record store owner who was selling the record in Florida.
LEITAO: Wasn’t, wasn’t there some kind of controversy with Al Gore’s wife?
PLUMIDES: Tipper Gore, Yeah. The thing is, people loves to remind me that it was a Democrat’s wife that was spearheading the Parent Music Resource Center because I’m a Democrat. But anyway, during all of that, GWAR plays at my club, probably a week or two or three after they had arrested the store owner in Florida for selling the 2 Live Crew album. And it seemed like every time there was some kind of incident — Charlotte wanted to have their own incident. I saw something had happened quickly. I was closed down one time — I was 25 years old at the time — owning a night club, and the vice squad that came in undercover after they read in Creative Loafing, (Creative Loafing is an alternative weekly here). Back then it was about 12 pages, but they had written it up as the gig of the week. I think the tip off supposedly was if you remember the last area GWAR performed, nine foot penises spewed and the slaves drank.
LEITAO: Sounds like one hell of a concert.
DANHAUSER: It’s not really 9 foot. That’s an exaggeration.
PLUMIDES: Yeah, the Cuttlefish of Cthulu is probably about two and a half foot. I remember when the two vice cops came in because they always have mustaches. I don’t know what it is about cops. They got mustaches. These two guys came in with cameras — they came in with these big Nikons around their necks, and they were laughing and whatever. And I was like, ‘I don’t know, maybe they’re Alice Cooper fans or something’, because they looked a little out of place and they ended up being the guys that came in and were taking pictures of the show and what have you. And then after the show is when the club was raided. It was easily 30 policemen, you know, some were in riot gear.
DANHAUSER: So is this what Phallus In Wonderland was based off of?
PLUMIDES: This is what Phallus in Wonderland was based off of.
DANHAUSER: Wow. that’s really interesting. I’m a pretty big GWAR fan. I’ve flown out to see them in New Orleans and California and Seattle.
PLUMIDES: So then you’re familiar with the mythos. Well, I mean there really was a judge Richard Boner , Dick Boner.
DANHAUSER: Seriously? I thought they were just making fun of the judge. I didn’t know that was his name.
PLUMIDES: That’s the guy’s name.
DANHAUSER: They confiscated the Cuttlefish of Cthulu?
PLUMIDES: They did, matter of fact. I was in the office and had all the door money all spread out on my desk, and there was a beat on the door and the whole night, I was just begging for it to be over. I just wanted it to be over — get this band out of here, let me go home. And it was really at a time where I was really struggling. I had just moved from the old location. We actually been shut down after an LA Guns show for fire code violations because we only had one exit and they said there was more than 150 people in there. So then after the fire code thing, I had to move from there to a new location. We spent about 60 grand trying to open up and building standards was all over us and it made the news that we had been shut down. We’d been voted best new club, best college bar and all of this two years in a row. I felt that I wasn’t just going to let it die after we got shut down the first time. So I moved to the other location. And this GWAR show was going to be the show that bailed me out. I was behind in my car payment and I had my car hidden the woods. I used the word tumultuous and I don’t know a better way to describe it. But I was basically living off the door receipts just trying to get off the ground. And so when we had the GWAR show and that it gets busted and then these cops in there in riot gear, they come in and the law enforcement is beating on the office door and they come in and they put me in handcuffs, they take me back-stage, says, “take us back-stage so we can arrest that singer and the priest he was a-fuckin’ in the ass.” So, I take him back there and the Dave Brockie (Oderus Urungus) he had taken the shoulder pads off, his mask and everything, but he still had the Cuttlefish of Cthulu and the big monster feet and the fishnet stockings on. And sitting back in the dressing room, which was adjoined to the office. So I walk in there and the cops say “which one of you all’s the lead singer?” And Dave Brockie turns around and he goes, “I’m the lead slave.” So they said that he was under arrest and he said, “Can you wait a minute so I can get my costume off?” And it’s, Daniel Sellers, the chief law enforcement officer there says, “Yeah, go ahead. Go ahead boy,” and Dave turns around and is like bare butt cheeks and just like leans over to take the feet off and his tee-back, you know, a thong with his butt cheeks hanging out with a bloody hand print on one ass cheek and he leans over to take the feet off and Sellers says, “I could have gone on without seeing that.” He just like points his ass to him as he’s taking the feet off. So they escort us out into the front like, and there’s a column of police cars and a helicopter with a light down on it and people are pushing up against the police cars and they’re hitting people with nightsticks and arresting people and they’re shoving us in the police car. I mean that was somethings straight out of a Hollywood movie, really.
DANHAUSER: They were hitting people with night sticks?
PLUMIDES: Yes. They arrested a guy — if you remember this band called Buzzoven?
DANHAUSER: Yeah, oh yeah.
PLUMIDES: They arrested Kirk Fisher, he was the singer / bass player.
DANHAUSER: Yeah. I’ve seen them open for GWAR before.
PLUMIDES: So they kind of muscle us into the squad car and, and taking this over to the police station. That was me and Dave and, Dave goes, “What am I charged with?” The police officer pulls out 10 little scratch, like one of those little spiral pads you stick in your pocket from Mead? He turns it over and he’s reading what he scribbled — what’ he’s going to charge them with, and he goes, “You have been charged with felony disseminating obscenity for more, felony disseminating obscenity charge violating North Carolina law more specifically for ejaculation — simulated ejaculation with two and a half foot latex penis, simulating sodomy and eating feces. Dave Brockie pondered it for a second. He says, “You mean you can’t do that in North Carolina?” But I read in a recent interview that Dave said that ‘we were trying to incite law enforcement, how can you have a band like GWAR and and not do that. And, and he had never admitted that until, here it is 20 years later. I just read that interview that he said that. As a matter of fact, Creative Loafing had written it up last year and they still do. Whenever they have an issue with the most infamous Charlotte moments it always makes the list. But anyway, I enjoyed some notoriety with the book when it first came out. I really wanted to get into screenwriting. I had actually written a screenplay for Kill The Music before I’d written the book, then I went and wrote the book from the screenplay. And then I went back and rewrote the screenplay after I wrote the book. Danny McBride actually has a copy of the script right now and we’re, and we’re waiting for him to read it someday. He’s a friend of a friend that gave that to him, but I don’t know. We’ll see. I don’t know if anything will come of it. I’d love to make it. I think it’s a great epic story. It follows two years of my life. When I wrote it, I mean, I was kinda thinking somewhere along the lines of Animal House meets The Big Lebowski, you know, meets all Almost Famous.
DANHAUSER: That’s cool. So you’re friends with Dave Brockie now?
PLUMIDES: The thing is that up until the time that I met Dave, which was really the only other conversation I’d ever had with him was in an 8 by 10 holding cell. It was me and him and this a vagrant that had defecated down his pants legs. We’re in this cell with this guy that crapped himself. It was just miserable. I write for blurtonline.com. They had it in their second print. It was originally a much lauded magazine called Harp magazine. And then they changed it to blurtonline.com, which is out of North Carolina, but is well respected in the college radio realm. And so I write , occasionally if I want to see a show. I covered Bonnaroo and I wrote something that covered the DNC for them, and I’ll go see the Alice In Chains show or go see GWAR or Social Distortion or Foo Fighters or Wolfmother. I’ve written about Motorhead, But Blurt actually, in the second print issue, in a article called, “What Price Blood And Guts?”, Was an excerpt from Kill The Music, and that came out in early 2010. Music writing — It’s just something that I know about and I’m kind of an insider and so it’s something that I still do. But I recently wrote in October when Ghost Trek ended up going up on Dread Central — I wrote an article called “My Symbiotic Relationship with GWAR”. Basically. It kind of expands my relationship with, with Dave Brockie, He invited me to Richmond. He always comes into town and he asked me to help him on some project, et cetera. And then he goes on tour and then I don’t hear from him. I’ll text him back and forth. He’ll take promo pictures with me, we’ll do all that. You know, but actually I think he’s in Russia right now. He’s on vacation in Russia. He’s been sending pictures back. He’s never been there, so he’s over there just cause he’s a big World War II history buff. Yeah. So he has actually, he has a book. I mean, you guys are into fantasy stuff, he has a book called Whargoul. Did you read Whargoul?
DANHAUSER: I haven’t read it. No, I haven’t read it yet. I’ve been meaning to buy it, but..
PLUMIDES: The whole Nightbreed Occupy Midian thing. It’s, it’s kind of like my GWAR arrest kind of legitimizes me in some weird fashion., But anyway, so what questions have you got about Nightbreed?
DANHAUSER: There’s been, I think over the years, a lot of animosity towards Morgan Creek and recently you said that 20th Century Fox was the distributor for the movie, right?
PLUMIDES: That’s correct. The distribution has changed hands. It’s now with Warner brothers. Originally Morgan Creek gave Clive the money. I mean, Clive made the movie that he wanted with Morgan Creek’s money. And I don’t think anybody would deny that. Clive wouldn’t deny that, et cetera. Morgan Creek does not have their own distribution, they’ll do distribution through a distributor. They’ll cut a deal with a distributor so they can get into the theaters. And the thing is people going “Yeah, fuck you Morgan Creek guy.” You know, I didn’t work for them. I was going to jail with GWAR 20 years ago.
DANHAUSER: When people say stuff on Occupy Midian — I mean there’s like 6,000 people on there. But when people say stuff, we try to nip that in the bud cause it’s not, it’s not really fair.
PLUMIDES: Yeah. You know, I’m here after the fact. I’m trying to clean up the mess. I saw the film in the theater. The way the film was cut, I didn’t really understand it. At the time I wasn’t a huge Clive Barker fan or anything like that. Barely read like a magazine or a newspaper let alone — at the time, I was entrenched in music, so that was my role. And uh, but I did go to see it and I remember there was a big crowd, well anyway, everybody says that it didn’t make any money… I would like to see the numbers, you know what I’m saying? ‘Cause everybody went out ’cause of Hellraiser. Everybody went to see the film and it was some mixed emotions about it. You didn’t have the Internet then. Maybe in the UK they knew of Clive’s book, but not here. They just went to see it because of the Hellraiser connection. That’s kind of the way that I would think.
DANHAUSER: And Hellraiser II had just come out.
LEITAO: And in the United States, Cabal had come out in conjunction with the Books of Blood. It was in the third volume of the books of blood. There was the little novella called Cabal included there. So it never really got a stand-alone release from what I understand.
DANHAUSER: It was the Sixth Volume.
PLUMIDES: So there wasn’t the mythology behind it as there is now. So when 20th century Fox got it (and matter of fact, I’m just connecting the dots years later because all of this stuff is under such strict scrutiny with me now because I need to know every facet of it) when they got it, they didn’t understand it. They cut it as slasher film. And the way that I know that it was 20th century Fox is because there was a box full of film clips recently found in Ohio. Okay. And it was 20th century Fox ’cause everybody was asking Warner brothers and Warner brothers should have a clue and Morgan creek didn’t have a clue. You know who knew? Fox did. That’s why they cut it. They were the ones that had the catalog and finally figured out. Now, everybody gets all excited about the found footage. I was sent a list of what exactly is in the box from Russell and there was a couple of never before seen trailers — was one thing that was in the box. But as far as the material needed to put the Cabal Cut back together in some kind of 35millimeter fantasy film — The film more than likely hasn’t been stored correctly and is damaged to the point where I don’t think that they could really use it.
DANHAUSER: Oh really? ‘Cause right now they’re just using VHS footage in the DVD, so they’ve got to be able to help at least.
PLUMIDES: I just wonder if I can’t actually talk about this right now because this was all the planning, but I know that Russell has, has been conversations with the British Film Institute in regards to that stuff. And, and the thing is they’ll have access to the actual original Nightbreed cuts.
DANHAUSER: Is that what Warner Brothers has?
PLUMIDES: That’s not lost because they make DVDs from that. We’ve got that, sure. It’s not like the film has disappeared. The negatives have not disappeared. What is, however, in question is the usability of the clips and the stems. And Dave has (David Robinson, the president of Morgan Creek) He’s explained to me what those are and whether it’s going to work or not. Something that Mark Miller and I discussed — we think that everybody knows what we’re trying to do. If you’re an Occupy Midian member or you keep up with Clive or you read in any of the horror online mags, everybody knows that we’re doing everything we can to put it together.
DANHAUSER: … To make the best possible version.
PLUMIDES: Whatever the end result is, I think people are going to be forgiving and we’re going to make it as good as we can for their enjoyment.
LEITAO: That is very reassuring.
DANHAUSER: And they’ll still have the original…
PLUMIDES: You’re going to have the original version and if you think about it, even though the Cabal Cut will be the second disc. We’re going to have the blu-ray release of Nightbreed, and then you’re going to have the Cabal Cut in the same box. The movie that y’all all fell in love with is the original cut, anyway.
LEITAO: I have a small question about this. I am assuming that at least for the theatrical cut we will have in the near future a Blu-ray HD transfer.
PLUMIDES: That’s what we’re working on.
DANHAUSER: Yay!
LEITAO: That’s wonderful.
PLUMIDES: Okay. We’re working on it. I can’t really talk about the details in regards to distribution, but there may even be a possibility of a limited film Release — Limited engagement in some theaters.
DANHAUSER: If that happens, I gotta fly to wherever that is.
PLUMIDES: We’ve confirmed for fantastic fest in Austin this year, so that’s in September. That’s at The Alamo Drafthouse in Austin, Texas.
DANHAUSER: Okay, so Texas people can…
LEITAO: Can expect to see the Cabal Cut.
PLUMIDES: And Russell told me that we have been invited to Dragon Con. I don’t think I’m overstepping my bounds by telling that. We were invited, and the last correspondence, I said we need to go ahead and confirm with them and go and get that going.
DANHAUSER: And that’s in Atlanta, right?
PLUMIDES: Yeah and there should be a couple of more festivals but I haven’t confirmed, but those are the solid ones. You were going to ask me about how I got kind of involved in it wiith the Mad Monster thing. It was one of the first incarnations of the Cabal Cut and I know that Russell still works on it and still is nipping and tucking and that sort of thing.
DANHAUSER: I was there at that Mad Monster Party. I might’ve even met you, I don’t know.
PLUMIDES: But you were there, you saw the screen. There was four or 500 people.
DANHAUSER: Oh yeah, it was awesome.
PLUMIDES: Let me tell you something, the funny thing is I, at the same time during that screening, I had Connor McCollough and Abby Miller doing the Ghost Trek makeup exhibition. So I was in there the whole time during the screening, so I didn’t even get to come in and say anything, say “hey, how are you” or anything like that. So, because of the scheduling conflict and we had no power in the middle of the floor, so we had to run extension cords. And then there was a couple hundred people looking on while Connor from face-off was doing the makeup. So I kept wanting to go back over there and I didn’t get a chance, but I did get to talk to Craig Sheffer and Ann Bobby and introduce myself to them and did speak with them. How I got involved with it… Evan McGarr, who was the con chair — he’s the promoter for Mad Monster, him and Joe Mo put that thing together. I had reached out to them cause I wanted to screen Ghost Trek, and they weren’t real receptive. They said, ‘Well, we’re not really going to do a film festival’ or ‘We’ve already got all of our movies that we’re to screen’ or something like that. And I go ‘listen, if you blow me off, I’ll make sure that all the local filmmakers won’t support your convention [laughing] so you give me your phone number, I need to talk to you. So he called me back and he goes, ‘Don’t post stuff like that on Facebook because we don’t want any negative publicity. We want to help you. We want to help you’. And I told him ‘Maybe we can help each other’. And I said ‘I’m not just some Yo-yo, I mean, I consult for Morgan Creek’, he said ‘Morgan Creeks!’ with an S, ‘Morgan Creeks! Clive’s people need a release from them so they can show this Cabal Cut thing.’ They’d been trying for a couple months and it fell on deaf ears and they don’t get in touch with the right person or whatever. I said ‘That phone call will take me 5 minutes’. So I called Dave and I said, ‘Listen, remember the movie that you guys made, Nightbreed? Clive Barker back about 20 years ago?’ ‘Vaguely.’.
LEITAO: Oh my god!
PLUMIDES: Well, Dave’s younger than me. I mean, David’s 42, 43 years old. You know what I’m saying? His dad was James Robinson ran Morgan Creek.
LEITAO: We’re just biased because we are Clive Barkerr fans. Of course. We have to know!
PLUMIDES: So I said there’s a little movement behind this thing and they might be able to do something with it. And they said, “We’ll look into it.” I’ll give it to them. I put everybody in touch with each other. Evan put Mark and them in touch with this is you need to talk to. I sent the email to Evan and I CC’d him and then he, CC’d Mark and then Mark got with Dave and then they ended up getting the whole ball of wax rolling. So that’s how that happened. I was just a fluke kind of phone call that Evan from Mad Monster made to me — we ended up working something out and then Ghost Trek. I mean we had Addie Miller from the Walking Dead. We had a couple of hundred people there to see the screening. My short, “Psychic Brats” that we screened before Ghost Trek won the Viewer’s Choice award there at Mad Monster, so that was pretty cool. That’s basically how that happened.
DANHAUSER: So you’re kind of the ambassador to Nightbreed for Morgan Creek now?
PLUMIDES: Well, yeah, that’s just how it kind of happened. And so Dave and I, we talked a little bit more and then two months later, he says, “Listen, I want you to look at this Nightbreed television pitch.” So he sends it, The writer’s name was going to be Matthew Venn, who had written it up. It was like a five-page word doc, and Matthew had met with Clive a few times. They’d been introduced to Clive’s agent ‘cause I think Clive’s agent, represents Matthew Venn. So they had come up with some ideas for a television series. A lot of the Hollywood people, they don’t know all of the intricacies of “art” aspects of their properties and things like that. They’re not going to read any of their clients’ books. It’s just not their world. So, when he sent it to me, he said, “I can’t make heads or tails of it. Tell me what this is”. So I looked at it and there was a solid storyline in there, but it had a bunch of stuff that it didn’t need. It had some minutiae that it didn’t really need — because when you’re trying to pitch something to television people they want to know a couple of things. They want to know what the story’s about. They want to know the episode description. They want to see if you’ve got any kind of artwork or concept drawings or anything like that. They want to know how much. How much is it going to cost per episode. They want to know who is the target market? They want to know why this makes sense for television. That’s what they want to know. They don’t want to know that Shuna Sassi was a prostitute at the rough house? They need to see an attractive lead. They need to see who’s the big time showrunner, you’ve got on the show? Those are the questions that they ask.
LEITAO: If it’s something based on a movie, if there’s still enough brand recognition from the fans to make it work, right?
DANHAUSER: Right now, because of the Cabal Cut…
PLUMIDES: The Cabal Cut really has been a wonderful springboard for a television project. I went back and I looked at the thing and Dave says, “Well you brought me this thing.” Even if it was their property. “You brought me this thing. Maybe we’ll get you under contract and, see if you can do something with it.” ‘Cause they were working on the Exorcist television show, and I kind of wanted to get on that. But then he’s partners with Roy Lee on that. And that’s some more inside stuff. Roy Lee, who’s produced “The Departed,” “The Ring”, “Quarantine”. And Roy Lee just did the “Bates Motel” thing for A&E. So the Nightbreed thing — I went back and basically rewrote the entire pitch package and started inserting some nice artwork. But I was really trying to get a lot of this stuff going and I wasn’t really under any particular directives and my contract was performance-based, and everything in Hollywood moves very, very slow. It takes people years. The company, Think Factory Media that I was under contract with for Ghost Trek was on a six month contract to see if they could do anything. And it never even got pitched to anybody. It took Leslie Bruce 25 years to get Hatfield’s and McCoy’s made. They had Tom Selleck attached to it at one time. Dennis Clay. And then they ended up getting Kevin Costner and got made. If that’s any indication of how long some projects take and you’ve got to find placement and you’ve got to put it together and you’ve got to get interest and you’ve got to get the money. In here I was an indie guy trying to stir up interest for Ghost Trek and then all of a sudden here’s this project. So I mean, I really switched a lot of my energy towards Nightbreed because Nightbreed obviously has a bigger fan base than I do. I’m just the guy from North Carolina with a bunch of good ideas and no money.
DANHAUSER: But when people bad mouth Morgan Creek, I try to remind them that without Morgan Creek’s support, we never could have gotten this far.
PLUMIDES: Let me tell you how I got involved with Morgan Creek. In my music daysI made a number of friends, and one of my good friends is a guy named Mark Brian — Plays Guitar for Hootie and the Blowfish. And he was the one that introduced in your Dave Robinson and Morgan Creek a couple of years ago. It’s funny because I had contacted Morgan Creek. I was introduced — Mark said “This is a good guy. He’s got this thing, Ghost Trek, he wants to talk to you about it,” et cetera. I talked to David, said, “Yeah, you want to take a look at it?” And I sent it — sent the whole package to Morgan Creek. And then I didn’t hear a word for like three months and I was going, ‘Oh, I guess they didn’t like it.’ And then I get a phone call from a 310 number and they say, “Hey man, I thought you were going to send me that package!” I said, “Where have you been? You didn’t talk to me for four months.” He said, I was in England finishing Dream House with Daniel Craig and Rachel Wise and you know, and then as soon as he got back, he called me. So we’ve had this kind of relationship since then. So I was going with Ghost Trek to all of these horror conventions, you know, Fright Night Film Fest and whatever. And I ended up reading that they got the movie, The Thing, the prequel. And they had the international distribution on it and were partnering with Universal, so they put in some money and so he’s going, , “So how do you think The Thing is going to do?” I said, “Well, I want to see it, but has anybody called John Carpenter? Because what I’ve read, it’s a basic ode to the carpenter film, which was based on the original novel and the original film with James Arness playing the big carrot-headed monster. So, has anybody called John Carpenter? And he says, “Why?” I said, well, because it’s basically an ode to Carpenter’s movie and you should probably call carpenter and get him to sing to all of this horror websites that it’s a great companion piece and he loved it. Get it prearranged. And he goes “Well, that’s interesting.” I mean that’s just like a no brainer. Remember when Interview With A Vampire came out before Anne Rice said, “I can’t believe they picked Tom Cruise!” He was raising all sorts of hell about it. And then went to see the movie, it had this vignette in the beginning that says, “Hello, I am author of interview With A Vampire, Anne Rice, I just want to say the Tom Cruise did a wonderful job.” You’re reading cue cards. “…At playing Lestat and so basically they had to throw some money at her to get her to sing Tom Cruise. And so that’s basically what I was saying for John Carpenter. So supposedly he went to Universal and it fell on deaf ears. They just remade The Fog. I still have not seen it because I heard it was abysmal. That movie with Carpenter’s name on it made money. So that’s basically what I was kind of gauging. If you’re going to do The Thing, then you need to get Carpenter in there somewhere — Carpenter as a producer, executive producer or something — or pay him some money to help promote the film. And nobody did that and the movie didn’t do very well. But then John Mayberry (I don’t know if you’re familiar with the author, Jonathan Mayberry. He’s a two-time Stoker Award winner. He’s also New York Times best seller. He does the Joe Ledger novels and a Rot & Ruin. And he wrote the Wolf Man Book for Universal). And John writes for Marvel, he’s written The Punisher series, Marvel’s Zombies, Black Panther. He’s written a lot of stuff for Marvel. And I have talked to John about the Nightbreed Comic reboot. Hopefully we can get that worked out. Yeah. We’ve got our fingers in a lot of pies. But, it was my knowledge of what’s going on in the Horror Sci-Fi genres that has been my contribution to Morgan Creek. And plus I’m a creative guy. In the indie world, you’ve got to wear a lot of hats. I’m not one of these technical people. You will probably never see me in a photograph looking through the viewfinder of the camera. ou know what I’m saying? I’m not that guy. I’m a writer. I can direct. I don’t say I’m a director. First and foremost, I’m a writer and I’m a creative guy. That’s basically what I like to do. And with Nightbreed… God, think about all of the directions you can go to. And Jose and I have talked about some of the stuff. Jose, would you like to comment?
LEITAO: Absolutely. I’ll comment as vaguely as I can without revealing anything. But I can say that I’ve seen some of the artwork that you have in store for the fans and, as creations for the show, it’s pretty amazing. It’s pretty mind-blowing. Anybody who’s a fan of Nightbreed is going to be very happy, very satisfied with what’s coming. I love it. I’ve seen some artwork and it’s just amazing. I’ve seen a few characters who are going to return and uh, they, some of them have been slightly redesigned. It’s just amazing. I’m really hoping for a chance when this goes out into the public that we can talk about this some more because I have so much I want to say about this, but I can’t spoil anything right now. So, you know, thanks for showing me that stuff. It’s really, really amazing. I’m really happy with it.
PLUMIDES: It’s one thing to have to toot your own horn, but somebody else toots your horn, that’s better. Amazingly, throughout my career I’ve had to toot my own horn so much it’s just wonderful to have other people say that something’s good without having to do it yourself.
LEITAO: Absolutely. I mean, Geez, the big surprise…
PLUMIDES: I’ve been working with Mark Miller who has been just fantastic. Well, the thing is, it was my idea to reach out to Clive and to reach out to Mark Miller and Russell and for us to work closely together on this thing. And as a matter of fact, David and I kind of talked about it a little bit, and I said, “I think that we should include them because of the notoriety that the Cabal Cut was getting. It would behoove us to all work together and be the champion for this thing. Whenever people compliment me it embarrasses me. And Mark said in an email recently, “before you showed up to champion Nightbreed.” That just feels good that somebody recognized… ”
DANHAUSER: That’s such a simple idea to work with Clive Barker and Mark Miller, but look what happened to Hellraiser. It’s such a powerful, such a good idea.
PLUMIDES: The thing is I just read recently that Tim Burton was going to reboot Beetlejuice. He was going to have a Beetlejuice 2 — the guy that wrote dark shadows. There was an article that came out in like May, 2012 on Bloody Disgusting or something. And the guy that wrote Dark Shadows was going to submit a treatment or submit a script or what have you. This was before Dark Shadows was released, because Dark Shadows didn’t really do the numbers they thought it was going to.
LEITAO: No, I saw the movie.
PLUMIDES: In comparison to what we’re doing, he’s going to hand it over to another guy to see what he can come up with. And so I want to do that but obviously once I have kind of laid this foundation, then a show-runner comes on. If he’s a big rock star show-runner, then half of my stuff is out the window, you know? So, so there’s always that apprehension. But the storyline that we followed was based on the Matthew Venn original pitch, which was based on information that Mark or Matthew got from Clive. Then I went back, changed some stuff and added in a character and gave some characters some names and gave the town a name and where it takes place. The more that I looked at it, the more I kind of of sat back and examined it, it looked a lot like the movie — basically making the movie over in an episodic 11 episodes, 12 episodes in a fashion to where you had so many similarities from the movie and the storyline, but Ican’t really go into that too much.
DANHAUSER: Well, if there’s anything that Occupy Midian can do to help promote this, we would love to be a part of it.
PLUMIDES: You guys did such a wonderful job with helping this thing along. The problem that I think that I kind of stumble over is… And with the petitions and all that, I think that that helps set the sail and raise consciousness for the film. And if there’s a preorder, I think that you could probably get those numbers. But people will sign a petition, but that doesn’t mean every one of them is going to buy a copy, you know? So it’s kind of like you have an event, and I’ve done it on Facebook, and have a thousand people say they’re going to show up and then 300 show up. That’s why when it is re-released on DVD or what have you, that it really needs to be done with somebody that really knows how to market this sort of thing. And, and it’s a wonderful foundation down for us.
LEITAO: Someone who can actually promote it with a commercial strategy and has some money into the promotion and the campaign. Of course, that’s going to be necessary.
PLUMIDES: But it also has to be people that understand genre films, you know what I’m saying? It can’t be somebody that’s just going to put it on a shelf somewhere in Walmart and that’s going to be it. It’s got to be somebody that understands the fans. Because it’s gotta to be somebody that is a fan, I think. We have high hopes for a release hopefully by the end of the year.
DANHAUSER: Yeah, that would be amazing.
LEITAO: That’d be fantastic. Let’s, let’s hope for the best.
DANHAUSER: Well, and you know, even after the film is released, Occupy Midian is still here. So we’re looking for things to help champion, like you do.
PLUMIDES: Well, for a new page, maybe Occupy Antioch.
LEITAO: Antioch. That sounds like a name of a city. Let’s give it a shot. Let’s give it a few, a few more weeks and see what comes out of that. That word. We’ll always be here and we will always be promoting this. And anything that’s related to Clive Barker or Nightbreed or even other things that are related to that universe. It’ll be our pleasure to promote it as much as we can. It’s just a springboard for an actual commercial campaign, but it’s a springboard that will help a lot I guess when the time comes.
PLUMIDES: Was there anything that you guys wanted to ask it specifically that I didn’t answer?
LEITAO: Well, so I guess you’ve already answered that pretty much. Morgan Creek is actually aware of what this movement is doing and they’re happy with it, right?
PLUMIDES: Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. As a matter of fact, the strategy that we talked about, this was six months ago, I said that everything that we can do for Nightbreed we can do on net. I mean early on, just to create enthusiasm and to get to the fans.And I think your Clive has really upped the bar in regards to his, communicating on the Internet, on Twitter and on Facebook.
DANHAUSER: Oh yeah, definitely.
PLUMIDES: I think that that has really been a big help. I think with the Occupy Midian website. Also with the Occupy Midian fan page. Not a fan page, you have a group page. Just almost like you don’t want to start over with the fan page. I guess it’s just as easy to be a part of the group.
DANHAUSER: There is a fan page also. That came along a little later and it doesn’t have as much pull, I guess.
LEITAO: Yeah. But we can start promoting it a little more.
PLUMIDES: Your knowledge about the subject about Nightbreed, and the novella, and Clive’s work — I have talked to him from time to time and we certainly don’t mean to leave you out or anything. This is just something that just kind of happened just because I had a worry that the purists wouldn’t really grasp what we were trying to do. We were updating some of the characters and the makeups and some of the concept art. I didn’t want to not understand or not know some of the facets that I may have overlooked. So I kind of reached out to Jose, you said, wait a minute. That when I sent you the one jpeg, you said, wait a minute, let me take my jaw up off the floor.
DANHAUSER: We were actually in the middle of recording our last podcast when that came through. So I didn’t see it, but he was like, “Oh my God!”
PLUMIDES: How can you do that to your boy?
LEITAO: Another thing I said was, let me just chase the cat because he got my tongue. Pretty amazing stuff and I’m very happy with all the directions that the pitch package is going. And one of the things that immediately comes to mind is how much detail is in everything and how much it is a coherent world — a coherence story premise — there’s so many places where this can go. And I know that things sometimes change. They go through different iterations and they go through different rewrites. But so far what I’ve seen is just really brilliant, amazing. And I’m really hoping that everything works out for the project of the TV show.
PLUMIDES: Well sometimes it takes one guy to look at another guy’s stuff and say, “Well, let’s do this. Let’s maybe try this a little bit, see what this looks like.” The artwork that you’re talking about was done by Tate Steinsiek. Tate has illwilled.com. He is a makeup artist. He appeared actually with Conor McCullagh. I haven’t spoken to Connor in a while. But Tate was the runner up. He did the big werewolf in the finale of Face Off season one. But Tate worked on amazing Spiderman. Tate was doing some work for Ve Neill after Face Off, and now he’s got his own production company. And he is actually designing some of the figurines for Clive’s collectibles. Mark Miller introduced me to Tate. So that’s how that happened. Tate is in love with Nightbreed. He was a Nightbreed fan before. It wasn’t like, ‘Hey, do you want to do this stuff?’ Tate was the one that came to them and said, I want to do this stuff because I know it inside and out. That helps. All right, we’ll throw ’em a bone. Jose, when you saw the redesign of Peloquin, it wasn’t that different.
LEITAO: Hang on. I saw the redesign of a female character.
PLUMIDES: Okay, but I hadn’t sent you Peloquin?
LEITAO: No, I didn’t see Peloquin yet.
DANHAUSER: All right. You guys!
LEITAO: Okay. And now I’m getting excited again ’cause I didn’t know Peloquin would be in the pitch package, so I’m just getting all worked up. You sent me one of the old redesigned characters — a female character. I’m not going to say the name. That was the one I saw.
PLUMIDES: Okay. All right. I thought you saw Peloquin. Well, the cats out of the bag now!
LEITAO: All right.
PLUMIDES: Right. So anyway, Peloquin is going to be bad-ass. I mean he’s, I mean, he’s going to be big and bad.
LEITAO: I’m really looking forward to that. I can’t wait for when this comes out and it starts leaking out into the proper channels and you’re going to get fans jumping up and down the walls. This is going to be awesome. You’re going to have everybody waiting to see this. Uh, I guarantee it. It’s going to be great.
PLUMIDES: I got to keep up with what’s going on, who’s getting signed up? Who has got a series going here or there? And really. It’s probably the most original, but still there’s a familiar aspect to it because people know the character. It’s just kind of like revisiting, even though it is kind of a cult film, very much like David Lynch’s Dune is like a cult film. It’s just original and it’s time for it. Twenty years ago they didn’t want people to associate the monsters with the good guys. The original film, I think it just was trying to do too much. It was overly expansive. He was trying to simplify something that’s relatively expansive. If you weren’t a total Clive Barker fan and read the novel, et Cetera — The average guy is going to be lost.
LEITAO: I agree. There were characters in the movie that you only get their names in the credits and you know, you’re, you’re watching the movie and you’re like, hey, this guy with a moon shaped head is really cool. I don’t really know his name. And then it’s in the credits. But where, where was he introduced in the movie? He wasn’t.
DANHAUSER: He is in the Cabal Cut.
LEITAO: Yeah. And there were like 200 different breed characters in the background that were created by Image Animation.
DANHAUSER: Even like Leroy Gomm and Lude who have lines…
LEITAO: Yeah. We don’t even know their names until the credits. It was really too much stuff to include in a single movie. So that’s why I think a TV show has a lot more room for character development.
PLUMIDES: And you have an opportunity for it to be episodic and for it to be multiple seasons and that sort of thing.
DANHAUSER: And you look at shows like The Walking Dead. I mean, television is so different now.
PLUMIDES: Another show, Banshee (if you’ve watched this on Cinemax probably about the fourth episode) that’s shot in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they also film Homeland. The thing is television is changing. Something that happened recently, something debuted on network TV and they only had 10 million viewers and they were complaining that only 10 million people had tuned in. I was thinking to myself, ‘You people, you’re not taking into account. People aren’t watching network TV anymore. They’re watching cable. Okay. They’re watching movies and watching content from Hulu &Hulu+ and Netflix on their phone and iTunes.’ And so when you go, ‘Oh well we only have 10 million’, you should be happy you’re getting 10 million people, ’cause nobody’s watching NBC anymore. Nobody’s watching CBS in the same fashion as they would have been 10 years ago to watch Survivor and you’d have 22 million people Watching Survivor.
DANHAUSER: And they rely on those Neilson things to get those numbers.
PLUMIDES: Now it’s different for cable because, cable the magic number there is 1.5 million. You’re going to get renewed If you got 1.5 million viewers. I think the Clive Barker’s Nightbreed television show could get 1.5 million viewers.
LEITAO: Oh yeah, absolutely.
PLUMIDES: It’s just going to depend on where are we go with it and then who you have attached to it is how it works. Things are doing well and listen, I’m going to have to jump, but that’s certainly appreciate you guys having me on.
DANHAUSER: Okay, thank you. We’ll put links to Ghost Trek on the show notes as well.
PLUMIDES: So you like Addie Miller? She’s actually in many ways more frightening than the little Zombie girl. That was based on the whole Jon Benet Ramsey case. I mean, our tagline was paranormal research with an emphasis on bad taste. So, I’m thinking the worst thing that I could choose was in Jon Benet Ramsey case, so that’s what I did.
LEITAO: Scary Carrie was a pretty impressive.
PLUMIDES: People like Scary Carrie, man. They just love that character.
LEITAO: But now there’s a second episode following the Kinsey report. This was just the pilot.
PLUMIDES: That was the pilot, and since we got so much good press — I mean Fearnet never writes indie stuff up. Well, they do sometimes. But I ended up getting the attention of one of the Fearnet writers because one of my influences was the Venture Brothers. And I wanted to do a ghost hunt show like Venture Brothers. Famous Monsters of Filmland wrote it up and Fearnet and Horror Society and the horror news — everybody wrote it up. They boasted 3 million visits to the website on Dread Central and I’m not saying that 3 million watched it, but 3 million people easily saw it on the header. They had that flash banner at the top. People know what it is. It’s out there. I thought I need some new material. I’m kind of filming it in on a shoestring, just because I probably spent too much money on the first one, you know — probably all together $40,000. I mean it was 20 with the production and then the post-production and there was going out promoting it and how much money we spent and giving out DVDs and free tee shirts and all that stuff to stir it up. But interestingly, the presentation packages that I had put together and the makeup exhibitions and all that stuff, that’s basically… (And Dave Robinson and Morgan Creek had seen all my stuff) And so that’s how I ended up kind of getting on Nightbreed as the creative consultant. I’m under contract with Morgan Creek on that. I’m really the only person under contract on Nightbred right now.
LEITAO: Psychic Brats, Is that online somewhere? Is that on Funny Or Die?
PLUMIDES: I had it up on Funny Or Die, then last year and then I took it down. I had 2000 views on Funny Or Die and I took it down and then I reposted it. But, actually a portion of Psychic Brats is going to be in the new Ghost Trek episode, we’re finishing shooting next Thursday. It’s called Ghost Trek Goomba Bodysnatchers Mortuary Lockdown and Panel Show.
LEITAO: Okay. And that’s going to be featured at Mad Monster this year, right?
PLUMIDES: That’s correct. We’re playing it at Mad Monster March the 23rd, a Saturday. I think the time is seven or eight o’clock. It’s just right after the main room is closed we’re going to have the screening. And let me say this another thing. I’m doing it Mad Monster. I haven’t discussed this. My dad made a sexploitation film called Night of the Cat. It was released in 1973. The 40th anniversary of Night of the Cat’s release is coming up this March. And so I decided to screen it at Mad Monster Party on March 22nd. I’m going to be there with Night of the Cat on March 22nd. March 23rd, I’ll have Ghost Trek early in the evening. That’s going to be 8:00. But Night of the Cat screening is going to be at midnight. It stars Nick Dennis from Spartacus, Morgana the kissing bandit, and a bunch of other people you’ve never heard of.
LEITAO: And it was shot in Charlotte, North Carolina too, right?
PLUMIDES: Shot in Charlotte, North Carolina and its environs in the 1972 and released in 1973. It originally was given an X rating. What we’ll be showing is the R-rated version, but they were going to do an 18 plus only. But it’s really not any more raunchy than anything that you’d see on TV now. It’s in one of those films that’s in the ‘So bad it’s good’ category.
LEITAO: We’ll add a link to Something Weird Video because I just found it there. Night of the Cat. And we’ll also add a link to your Amazon book to promote this because it sounds like it’s going to be really, really funny read.
PLUMIDES: I just found out today, I’m on one top 20 list under punk rock books on Kindle. It’s in the top 20 and under metal it’s at 24. So that was pretty cool. I just happened to fall on that today. Now the thing is is I’m always wondering where the money goes. Whenever you release something online, you don’t know how many units are being sold. I mean, you have a right to a court order, but you can order someone to show the numbers to do an accounting, because they’re basically a trustee with your intellectual property. I’ll get a royalty check for about $70. I have no idea what’s being sold, who’s selling it, who’s getting paid. Cause it ain’t me.
LEITAO: Okay, well we’ll still put a link to it anyway.
PLUMIDES: That’s fine. Because it, for as long as it promotes me, I’m happy. I like me. Me Is cool.
DANHAUSER: And Mad Monster Party too. I am sure people in Charlotte already knew about it, but we’ll put a link to that too.
PLUMIDES: It’s going to be fun. Mad Monster just announced that they’ll be having a Mad Monster Party in New Orleans this September. All right, fellas. I appreciate you having me.
LEITAO: Thank you very much for taking the time to join us and all the cool stuff that you reveal in the interview. And thanks again for all the work you’ve been doing with Morgan Creek for the Cabal Cut.
DANHAUSER: So this was episode 31 of the Clive Barker podcast — an interview with Michael Plumides again from Morgan creek, and author of the book, Kill The Music. You can reach us on the web at www.clivebarkercast.com. This podcast is on iTunes. So if you’re in there, if you could leave us a review, that would be awesome. On Facebook we have a fan page and also we’re very active admins for the group Occupy Midian so you can find us there often. On Twitter we’re @BarkerCast and @OccupyMidian. And the forum is www.timewinds.com/Clive/forum and the official website for Occupy Midian is www.occupymidian.com. Michael Plumides on Twitter, If you want to follow him, he’s got a Twitter account for @GhostTrekTV. So that’s it. And have a good weekend or evening or whenever it is that you’re listening to this.
DANHAUSER: Okay. Hello, this is Ryan again. In the original airing of this episode, we had the song, “The Morality Squad” by GWAR right here. In order to respect the rights-holders, we have removed it from this episode. I recommend that you find “The Morality Squad” by GWAR. It”s On the album, “America Must Be Destroyed” and give it a listen. Thanks for understanding. And this podcast, having no beginning will have no end.
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