Scott Nicolay

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Tag: GoodFellas

E. Elias Merhige: The Greatest Apple You’ll Ever Eat | The Outer Dark: Episode 29 — JANUARY 28, 2016

85307_4070_1433688357_413a0b In possibly the most mind-blowing episode to date, filmmaker E. Elias Merhige (Shadow of the Vampire) traces his path from the genesis of the acclaimed experimental film Begotten to its highly anticipated rebirth in definitive and alternate versions on 35mm and Blu-ray in the near future. He explores and dissects his cinematic vision in the context of a shared interest with the Weird to push boundaries to create beautiful, powerful and terrifying works, recounts his first epiphanal encounters with Nietzsche and Artaud and the birth of his obsession with “art that actually lives,” relates his own creative process to a form of possession culminating in a volcanic eruption, transports listeners back to the life-changing screening of Begotten in Susan Sontag’s New York apartment when he was just age 25, discusses the fertile artistic nexus in the early-to-mid 20th century with surrealism, Dadaism and expressionism, muses on the artist/writer/filmmaker as our culture’s shamans, gets passionate about cinema as alchemy and Shadow1creating film emulsions that act as a lens for exploring meaning, effuses about the CERN Collider (an example of how now there is “more going on in science and biotech than in most art galleries”) and photographs as “life forms,” discusses why he feels more freedom working with lower film budgets, talks about the joy he gets from conversations with his creative contemporaries and his excitement in connecting with the Weird community, draws back the curtains on a beautiful back story involving John Malkovich, cocktail napkins and the powerful train scene in Shadow of the Vampire, provides an eclectic playlist of the music that drives his creativity (Wagner, Iggy Pop, John Cage, Nurse With Wound, Diamanda Galas, Stuart Dempster, and many more) and reveals an intriguing roll of artists, authors, poets and filmmakers who have served as his biggest influences and provocateurs from Homer to Baudelaire, Bely to Ligotti.

The conversation concludes with what’s next for Merhige including making the final feature-length installment of the trilogy that started with Begotten, writing a new film script which relates the Hiroshima bombing through the eyes of schoolchildren, editing the second draft of his first 900-page novel, and culminating with the restoration of Begotten. Included are exclusive announcements about the upcoming Kickstarter campaign for Begotten’s restoration and dynamic details about the endeavor which go beyond your wildest imagination. As Merhige says, ”some exciting shit, my friend.”

throatsprockNews from the Weird:. Arkham Digest columnist/Strange Aeons fiction editor Justin Steele joins Scott for the latest news and a retro review of classic horror novel, Throat Sprockets (1994), by Tim Lucas, editor/publisher of the venerable Video Watchdog. The book was inspired by cinema, has been described as “If JG Ballard wrote Dracula,” and was recommended by author Gemma Files.

This archival episode will be available again at This Is Horror soon. In the meantime, subscribe at iTunes  or Blubrry to make sure you don’t miss an episode.

Next week’s guest: Simon Strantzas, author of Burnt Black Sons and editor of The Year’s Best Weird 3.

More Links:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E._Elias_Merhige

Begotten on IMDB: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0101420/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Begotten

Din of Celestial Birds: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XCnp63TbxXw

Suspect Zero trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jJLYRnHk8AE

Brian Jones Presents The Pipes of Pan at Joujouka: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LwEoDGeNyrE

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Death_of_Virgil

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adalbert_Stifter

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Der_Nachsommer

https://weirdfictionreview.com/2012/05/the-dissection/

News From the Weird:

https://vdarcangelo.wordpress.com/

https://perpetualpublishing.com/

https://chthonicmatter.wordpress.com/nightscript/

https://www.darkregions.com/books/new-releases/burnt-black-suns-by-simon-strantzas-deluxe-special-edition

A Care for Dark Cookery: Sampling the Menu Chez Clint Smith| The Outer Dark: Episode 21 — NOVEMBER 24, 2015

(1) Ghouljaw and Other Stories - FINAL CoverClint Smith talks about his latest story in C M Muller’s journal Nightscript and the excitement of sharing a table of contents with both other established and emerging voices, the strength and good new work in the Weird fiction community now, his first collection Ghouljaw and Other Stories, the weirdness of Henry James’ “The Jolly  Corner,” his repetitious obsession with haunted houses, his knack for crafting titles that resonate, allusions to Night Gallery and The Day of the Locust, his propensity towards young protagonists trapped on the path to adult maturity, the barbershop and other father-son rituals, a favorable comparison to Breece D’J Pancake, when insects intrude into the house, a Bradbury inversion, obstacles and contradictions in the Mythic Indy coverMiddle American town, a pleasant face on the street, his background in the culinary arts, a future work involving race, sex and hierarchy in restaurant kitchens of the 1950s, moving away from the single white male protagonist to use the Weird to engage in more robust relationship issues, his Dunhams Manor chapbook “When It’s Time For Dead Things To Die,” his story “The Fall of Tomlinson Hall” in Mythic Indy, more upcoming work including “Dirt on Vicky” in Year’s Best New Horror 26 edited by Stephen Jones, and his reading recommendations of contemporary Weird writers including Kristi DeMeester, Ralph Robert Moore, Marc E. Fitch and Christopher Slatsky.

YBWF-2 News of the Weird Special Guest: Michael Kelly, editor/publisher of Undertow Publications and 2015 World Fantasy Award nominee for the journal Shadows and Tall Trees, visits The Outer Dark to remind writers, editors and publishers that the deadline draws near for Year’s Best Weird Fiction, Volume 3, edited by Simon Strantzas. Send all submissions (up to 20,000K) to bestweirdfiction@gmail.com before Dec. 31. Michael also previews upcoming 2016 Undertow releases.

xsforeyesAnd Justin Steele joins Scott to review X’s for Eyes, the latest novella by Laird Barron and a JournalStone/Bizarro Pulp Press release in softcover and eBook in December.

This archival episode will be available again at This Is Horror soon. In the meantime, subscribe at iTunes  or Blubrry to make sure you don’t miss an episode.

Next week’s guest: Robert Levy, author of The Glittering World.

whenitstimeMore Links:

Twitter:  @clintsmithtales

Amazon.com:  Author’s Page

Cooking:  cookingwithclint.com

bnh26-pshttps://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/aug/08/breece-pancake-trilobites-baffled-love

https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/mythic-indy-an-anthology-of-short-stories#/

https://www.indystar.com/story/entertainment/2015/11/04/mythic-indy-looking-beyond-legends/75169948/

https://www.strange-aeons.com/

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