Eye On Horror
Eye On Horror
Surviving the Night with Author Will Rogers
This week, the boys welcome horror author Will Rogers to discuss his new book SURVIVING THE NIGHT! It's a new slasher "Choose Your Own Adventure" coloring book, featuring many opportunities to add as much, or little, blood as you want! We talk about the inspirations behind the book, the process of coming up with multiple endings, different takes on the CYOA format, as well as his ongoing podcasts (Guide to the Unknown & Blackwood) and of course love for the Blair Witch Lore.
But before then, the boys review Novocaine, The Haunted Lighthouse: A Seaworld 4D Experience, 1977's Apaches and other Safety Video Horrors, The Rule of Jenny Pen, The Gorge, Last Breath, Black Bag, and Mickey 17! Its all new on EYE ON HORROR!
BUY SURVIVE THE NIGHT AT YOUR LOCAL BOOK STORE OR HERE:
https://insighteditions.com/products/survive-the-night
https://www.scaryfun.fun/home/survivethenight
Movies Mentioned on the Show:
https://letterboxd.com/correianbbq/list/eye-on-horror-podcast-sn-8-ep-4/
Follow us on the socials: @EyeOnHorror or check out https://linktr.ee/EyeOnHorror
Get more horror movie news at: https://ihorror.com
Welcome to Eye On Horror, the official podcast of eye horror.com this is episode 144 otherwise known as season eight. Episode Four. I'm your host, James Jay Edwards, and with me, as always, is your other host, Jacob Davidson, how you doing? Jacob,
Jacob Davidson:doing fine. It's just another very gloomy, cloudy, rainy day in California. It
James Jay Edwards:is coming down, and it has not given us enough of a break for the dogs to go out to do their thing. So I'm a little afraid that we might have, that we might have accidents in the house. But that's my problem. Not anybody else's also with us. As always, is your other other host, Jon Correia, how you doing Correia?
Jonathan Correia:Doing great, and sorry for for making the Greta joke. Greta leaving purses all over. Jay's new dog is named Greta, so I had a reference to the to the movie,
James Jay Edwards:yeah, and the purses are huge. What's what's been going on? The big new release this week that I did see, and I don't have either you guys seen Novocaine. I saw it well, they had preview screenings about last weekend, and I saw it Monday, so I was actually a little late to the party on it. But this is that the Jack Quaid movie that is, um, he plays a character. It's actually, I love the gimmick. He is Nathan Kane, and he doesn't feel pain. So His nickname is Novacaine, and he and it's a real condition, something where your pain receptors get blocked or something. But anyway, he can't feel pain, so his he were, he's a assistant bank manager, and one of his tellers, who he's kind of has a crush on, actually jokes. She's like, You're a superhero, and she's played by Amber Midthunder from Prey, but she there's a robbery at his bank, and and of course, he gets the shit beat out of him, and you know, but he didn't feel it, but he does get knocked unconscious, and when he wakes up, she has been taken as a hostage so that these robbers can get away from from the police. And of course, he because he likes her. He makes it his mission to go after and rescue her. He even says several times, I don't care about the money you can keep all the money you've got. I just want you know her name's Sherry, so I just want Sherry back. And this, this movie is, I wish it was more fun, honestly, because there's a lot of humor in it that mainly derives from him not being able to feel pain, like these guys are beating the shit out of him, not realizing that he can't feel it. And there's one scene, which is actually in the trailer, where he's being tortured, and he's using it to buy time, because, you know the the guy is going to kill him, but he figures out a way to make the guy torture him first so that he doesn't kill him right away. And he's like, doing all these things. So how's that feel? And he's acting like it hurts, but he doesn't know what pain feels like. He's Oh, oh, no, don't do that anymore. Oh, it's like, the worst acting on it. But so there's some humor like that. But other than that, just kind of and by the third act, it just evolves into like, you know, rock them, sock them, punch out. So you're like, you know, I wish that they had leaning. I wish that they had made it more fun. I wish I wanted The Beekeeper and, you know, you got more, like, Taken, you know, so
Jonathan Correia:well you have A Working Man coming out soon. So, yeah, I'm
James Jay Edwards:expecting the same thing from that, but for different reasons. Um, the fun thing, there are a couple fun things about Novocaine that are cool. Is one, it was filmed in San Diego, so I got to see, like, you know, it basically, there's a lot of cool stuff that I recognize being down here. And they made some in jokes about the chargers and the clippers and the Padres and so, you know, it's kind of funny. But the other fun thing is, they showed it to us, to the press, in four dx, which the only thing I'd seen at this point in 4Dx was Godzilla King of the Monsters. And Godzilla, King of the Monsters was an awesome movie for 4Dx because not only did the seats move, but it used like the wind and the rain and all that stuff. Yeah, Novocaine wasn't really the the right movie for 4Dx because, I mean, it was kind of fun during the car chases. It felt like you were in the car, but it they were, like, using it during the fight scenes and trying to, like, you know, throw you around. And it wasn't. It was kind of distracting. And there's one scene where the guy's at a bar and a guy comes. Behind him and taps him on the back. And, of course, it hits the back of your seat, and you're like, the fuck was, you know, it's like you think someone's kicking your seat, is what, you know. But there is one cool part where he where he shoots a guy in the head and and the little spray thing hits you, so you feel like you got his blood. That was, that was probably the coolest thing on the 4Dx but, yeah, it was 4Dx
Jonathan Correia:A not all 4Dx experiences can feel like the Alien Encounter at Disneyland in the 90s.
Jacob Davidson:Extra Terrestrials, yeah?
James Jay Edwards:Or Honey, I Shrunk the Audience. Do you guys remember
Jacob Davidson:that one? Yeah, that was a fun one too.
Jonathan Correia:Alien was better. Oh, actually, I didn't even mean to do this, but speaking of 4Dx movies, there's been this hole in my Joe Dante filmography viewing that I finally filled this past week I tracked down it was watermarked as shit, but I've tracked down a copy of Joe Dante's the light haunted lighthouse, 4d
James Jay Edwards:Yeah, the R L Stein thing, they showed that at Disney or at Sea World. Yeah, we were discussing that at Novocaine, because I could have sworn, Honey, I Shrunk The audience was at Sea World. I kind of we didn't make a bet, but I lost that argument because, honey, I shrug. The audience was Disneyland and the Sea World. One I saw was, was a haunted lighthouse. Yeah, that was
Jonathan Correia:such a weird movie. It's directed by Joe Dante, written by R L Stein, as he said, It's got Christopher Lloyd as, like, the kind of Harbinger, like Seaman there, Leah Thompson and Michael McKean play the two go to the two parent ghosts. And then there's these two kid ghosts. And one of them's, like the kid actress, who was, I think she was Samara and Lilo and and Lilo and Stitch, I don't know. It was just like a stacked cast. You got Joe Dante. It's super over the top. There's like, weird, very Joe Dante bits where, like, the kid ghosts are, like, can't you tell where it goes? And the kid, like, takes off his head and it like, floats forward the it was really weird. But like, you know, it was story about this, you know, these family the their boat is going to crash into the thing. So the kids hide in the lighthouse, and the the parents die, and then the kids get taken by a wave, and so they're haunting the thing, and they just want to be reunited with their parents. But it ends with the most random bit, like the ghosts become a like tourist attraction after, because it's a happy ending. And then, like, the ghost boy is like dancing in the background, but he's like, green screened into dancing in the background. And it's the most random. And I had this like moment where I thought I was high because, like, it was happening, and Lindsey had no reaction to this. And before I could say, do you see that kid dancing there? Weird. Al shows up as the waiter. Um, and I was like, What the fuck. And then all sudden, they green screen, this kid, this kid doing the most random dance, but like sideways on, like the right side of the thing, like parallel. And I was just like, What the fuck just happened? And then it goes the end. So, yeah, I can't, I can't I, I can't believe I'm saying. I wish I had gone to Sea World and seen this in 4Dx he got thing, yeah, if
James Jay Edwards:you, if you had 3d glasses on, and we're seeing it, you know, with 4Dx it would have made a little more sense. But, yeah,
Jonathan Correia:not seeing it on YouTube with the water in like, 320
James Jay Edwards:Yeah, but that watermark is probably in 3d, two, if you had the glass, you know,
Jonathan Correia:maybe a book, yeah, that was a weird one. That was, that was like, All right, cool. Now I can check that off my Joe Dante filmography. Now I just got to find, you know, The Movie Orgy, that screening of that somewhere when I have three hours to spare.
Jacob Davidson:Options, options, options, yeah,
Jonathan Correia:no, but I love watching ride videos that were used to be in there. Shrek 3D was a favorite of mine as a kid, so like, used to watch that DVD all the time. And then the other weird one that I watched a discovered resheet recently was this. It was a public safety video meant to teach British children not to play around farm equipment. It's called Apaches Yes,
James Jay Edwards:Apaches. I love Apaches. Yeah. It's
Jonathan Correia:about these seven kids who are playing pretend. They're pretending they're, you know, cowboys and Indians and that they bounce between sides it, but they're mainly playing as Apaches. I found it because it's on Edgar Wright's top 1000 movies, or 1000 movies to watch. And I was like, What the fuck is this 1970s Apaches movie? I looked into it. It's from the same director who did The Long Good Friday. I. And boy, howdy, was that special, Was that fucking amazing? It's, it's, it's filmed Dream like, but it really Jay and I were talking about before we started recording its final destination.
James Jay Edwards:It totally is. It's like they're playing around this farm equipment, and the farm equipment, it doesn't really come to life, but they're the most random accidents that you're like, Was that really an accident, or did they just get murdered by that Baylor? It's, it's
Jonathan Correia:28 minutes of this group of kids just being picked off one by one, like, the first, like, at first, it goes on for like, five minutes. They're just playing Apache, and then all sudden, this kid, they're like, he's on a tractor bed, and he takes a dinger off and gets run over by the tractor. And then it's like, from there on, it's just like, boom, ba, boom. Like, kid getting knocked off. And they keep playing. And you would think after like, one or two they would stop doing that, but like, no, they kept going until there was one left, and he, like, jumps on a tractor and accidentally, like, kicks off the brake and like, goes off the side of like a hill with it. It's just like Jesus. And it's like, 1200 children died in farming accidents last year. And it's like, yeah,
James Jay Edwards:if they play Apache like that, yeah, I first saw Apache because it was on a list. I want to say it might have been cracked.com but it was on a list of basically what you said, like these, you know, the most horrifying public service announcements. And you can find it on YouTube, and it is, I mean, looking back on it with today's eyes, it's hysterical. But if you consider, I mean, if you were a kid in the 70s and you saw this on TV, Yeah, whoa, nightmares,
Jonathan Correia:I could just imagine, like, because it's also something that they would show in schools, of like, Hey kids, this is real serious. And then, like, there being like, a couple of like, monster kids in the background, just be like, This is awesome. Whoa. Like, it's well done, but it's,
Jacob Davidson:yeah, no, I would say I think it was a found footage festival for everything is terrible, and they played that along with some other British, British and European PSAs. It meant that they did not fuck around with PSAs in Europe, because there's also, like, this German one, I think it's called safety last and like, oh yeah, it was about forklift safety. And, like, dudes get impaled with forklifts. And, yeah, they, they really want a hammer that, you know, real accidents had real consequences in the workplace, or, you know, around farms and stuff,
James Jay Edwards:there's a, there's a whole series of commercials where, like, there's one where there's a chef working in the kitchen, she, you know, and she's like, Oh, hi, I'm getting married this weekend. It's gonna pop up. And she's like, but none of this is gonna happen, so I'm about to have a terrible accident. And then she slips, and this pot of boiling oil spills all over her face, and you're watching this, and you're like, I did not expect that turn.
Jonathan Correia:Oh, man, I remember that one. There's a whole
James Jay Edwards:series of them like that, where you watch these terrible accidents happen, and you're like, Whoa, you know. And it starts off with just this normal, you know, hi. Meet the you know, meet this person.
Jonathan Correia:There's also some, like, the there's forklift PSAs, where they actually hired like, special effects makeup people and like, it's just like people just getting, like, skewered by forklifts and all this stuff, like they wanted it to look as real as possible. And those are, those are great compilations to watch, too. Yeah, gnarly. PSA videos are always a blast, but Apaches is diff is, like, next level, like it's, it's so well shot, and it just comes off, almost Dream like, it's definitely feels like a fever dream with, like, just children getting dingers and knocked off. Like there's one kid that drowns in poo like I it's very ethereal. But yeah, that, that was a that was a good time
Jacob Davidson:in terms of new releases, and don't, I don't think there's been a lot of new horror, but I did see The Rule of Jenny Pen at Alamo a couple days ago, and it's pretty intense, pretty solid. Have you guys heard of it?
James Jay Edwards:I've heard of it, but I haven't seen it. Is it's gonna be on shudder, right? Yeah, it's
Jacob Davidson:gonna be on shudder on the 28th it's got, like, a short theatrical run right now. It's basically about Geoffrey Rush as this judge, who has a stroke and he ends up partially paralyzed, and he's put into this nursing care home, and he's a bit of a misanthrope, and he's kind of kind of adjusting. But the thing is, is, turns out at night, John Lithgow plays the. This seeming dementia patient who always has like a weird little baby doll puppet on his hand, and he loves to just physically and psychologically torment the other residents in this old folks facility. And so it becomes kind of a psychological game of wits, because he wants to try and break Jeffrey rush, and he's just tormenting him, and it's kind of a lot of back and forth, and it was very solid. You know, the most surprising thing to me too is that it's set in New Zealand, so they both have New Zealand accents for the movie. I love
Jonathan Correia:it when Lithgow does gore and creepy stuff, like his De Palma films are some of my favorites. Oh yeah, no. It definitely feels like
Jacob Davidson:he's evoking that. I'm not going
James Jay Edwards:to be able to look at Lithgow anymore without seeing disappointed Lithgow face from the why they didn't cut to that during Adrian Brody's speech. That's a missed opportunity, right there. They definitely should
Jonathan Correia:have, I thought you're gonna say without picturing John Lithgow slapping Harry in Harry and the Hendersons get out of here. No more. What is?
James Jay Edwards:What is hagsploitation called? When they're not hags when they're when they're geezersploitation. Geezersploitation?
Jacob Davidson:Yeah, no, it was basically like Bubba Hotep, instead of a soul sucking mummy, it's a psycho John Lithgow with a puppet.
Jonathan Correia:Sold, yeah, old sold. That is, that is, yeah, that is a tagline to get me to go see that. Hell yeah. Have
James Jay Edwards:a have either you guys seen Mickey 17? Not yet seeing it this weekend. I'm kind of conflicted with it, because it's a, it's a great movie. It's, I mean, it's really well made. It's really good science fiction. There is a very thinly veiled Trump character in Mark Ruffalo. And it is, it's basically, is about, there are these colonization trips that go to some other planet, and Robert pattinson's character, Mickey. He volunteers to be on one of these because he needs to get away from Earth. He's in some trouble on earth, and He volunteers. He doesn't know what he's volunteering for, but he volunteers to be an expendable. And when he volunteers that everyone's like, really an expendable. Did you read the contract? You know what you're doing. You know. And basically what he is is he's a guy who they they save him in on like a hard drive, and they make him do all of like, the really hard missions, or they'll use him for, like, testing, for like, you know gasses, or you know diseases or anything. And when he dies, they just reprint his body out and download his memories back into him so he can, he can, he can be reborn. And 17, this is the 17th time he came to life. And the problem is arrives when they reprint him without being sure he's dead. So there's two of them there. There are. There's a Mickey 17 and a Mickey 18. So that, you know, that kind of, you know, supposedly, when there are duplicates, they're supposed to exterminate them both. So that's the crux of the movie. It's, I mean, like I said, it's a good science fiction movie. I just kind of, it's not great. And the reason is, I feel like they could have gone I wanted more of a statement, because it could have really made statements about, like genetic testing, or like lab rats, or things like that, which it kind of goes toward, but not as hard as it should have. And the other thing is, it gets towards the end. When they get to the planet that they're going to, there's obviously already a life form that lives there. They call them creepers. And of course, they want to take the planet for themselves. So it could have made stronger statements about imperialism. The only thing it really does at 1.1 character goes, but we're the aliens, you know, dun, dun, dun. And then that's all there was. So it I, I guess I was a little disappointed that it didn't, you know the difference between good and great science fiction, I guess is the message. But I mean, it's, it's worth seeing just Robert Pattinson is amazing because there are subtleties between the different Mickeys, because each Mickey has the memories of the one before, so he still evolves as a character. And the subtleties between the different ones are pretty incredible. He's, uh, man, that, that dude, dude. His post Twilight career has been just incredible,
Jonathan Correia:trying real he's trying to make up for it, you
James Jay Edwards:know, him and Kristen Stewart both. And I think they're both doing a great job. Yeah, I think Twilight was their paycheck, and now they're doing what they want to do, which, hey, more power to him. Have you
Jonathan Correia:guys heard of the gorge? Uh,
Jacob Davidson:yeah, yeah, the new Scott Derrickson movie on Apple TV. Yeah,
Jonathan Correia:we watched that the other day, and it's pretty good. It's Miles Teller and Anna Taylor Joy play these two like elite snipers, different backgrounds. He's a. American, she's Russian and there's this place where it's like, it's this gorge, and, you know, there's this mist above in it. But basically, they're both stationed on a opposite side towers. The Russians control one side, the Americans control the other, and they're there to keep whatever is in the gorge from getting out. Do
James Jay Edwards:they care if it goes to the other side? Because you say that they're different. So, I mean, are they, are they kind of playing a game of, like, tug of war, where, like, as long as it goes out on that side, we're fine? No,
Jonathan Correia:no, it's it's more so, like, it's basically like two enemies are both, like, no, whatever is down there is bad. Like, we both have to, like, work on keeping it up, but you stay on your side. We stay on our side. No communication is supposed to happen between the two.
James Jay Edwards:Okay, so they're cooperating. They're not okay, yeah, yeah. It's like,
Jonathan Correia:it's supposed to be, like a tense cooperation, like there's supposed to be no contact. But of course, you know, miles Taylor and Anna Taylor joy are such pretty people. They start, you know, seeing each other through the binoculars, and they start writing notes to each other, and they're playing chess across the gorge, and it's real cute, and, oh, my God, they're so falling for each other. It's the chemistry is kind of not there between the two.
James Jay Edwards:There's a gorge between them. How chemical can they get?
Jonathan Correia:I mean, it they they try. But there's a certain point where, like, they, they go to have a date and stuff and miles, teller is like, zip lining across the gorge, and then he falls into the gorge, and then she goes in after him. And once they're like, in the gorge, it's pretty cool, like, the the world, what's down there? It's, they're basically like, because, like, the whole time they're like, the mouth of hell is down there. And like, so there's a lot of, like, inspiration from hell, depictions of Baroque painters and stuff. And it's, it's almost Lovecraftian, the horrors that are down there. And there's some cool stuff. But to be honest, by the time you're down there, you're like, an hour into the movie, and like, the and again, the crux of it, the falling in love relationship. I don't know. I definitely was sitting there going, like, there's a big age difference here. And I don't know if I really buy Anna Taylor joy, who just has rich face as like, a poor Russian sniper lady. You know, it's so like, yeah, it is, it is fun. There are some fun moments, but especially once you get into the gorge and Sigourney Weaver plays, you know, the military contract evil lady, which is always fun when she gets to, you know, ham it up a bit. But having just recently watched Vamps again, I'm like, I needed, I needed Sigourney Weaver to tap into that more. But yeah, it's, it's fine. It definitely, you know what it feels like? It feels like one of those, like, really expensive streaming movies, because that's, that's what it is, an expensive streaming
James Jay Edwards:move. You don't say, yeah,
Jacob Davidson:it is what it is.
James Jay Edwards:Their big problem is they should have had Anya Taylor Joy do the zip lining since she had experience from Furiosa.
Jonathan Correia:Well, that's true, the pole vaulting. But I mean, like, it's, it's fun. I mean, like, I had a lot of fun with it. I just kind of wish there was, I wish the chemistry, like, because half of it's a romantic movie, and the other half is, like, this one, almost cosmic horror stuff going on, and the cosmic horror stuff was cool. I just wish like or like that that type of horror was cool. But like, I wish the love story worked a bit better for me. But
James Jay Edwards:it can't all be Heart Eyes. It can't. I have a couple quick ones that are questionably horror, but I think everything we're talking about is questionably horror, except for Jenny Penn, Apaches. A couple, actually, Apaches were a couple weeks ago. I saw the Last Breath. Have you guys seen that? No, this is, this is a story you probably heard. I've seen it. The true story in a tons of like of those YouTube survival videos. It's basically about these immersion divers, you know, the guys who basically live in the pressurized environment for like, months on end. And they, while they're working, their ships, GPS gets damaged, so the ship, like floats away, and these two guys are, well, one of them gets left at the bottom of the ocean, and they have to go back down and save them. And I tell you, this movie, first of all, it's only 90 minutes long, and it is the most tense 90 minutes, the most intense 90 minutes, I think I've, I've ever felt. And it is, there's no fat on this movie. It is, I mean, the little bit of fat that you might consider fat are at the beginning and the end, but once they get to, like, the actual, you know, operation and the, you know, the rescue, there's no fat because there can't be this dude's stuck down there, and he only has 15 minutes. There. You can't afford any fat there. But yeah, the last breath, that's, it's a pretty hardcore survival story. And the other thing I saw is the new Steven Soderbergh movie, not presence, Black
Jonathan Correia:Bag. Oh, right, does that guy just not go home? I, you
James Jay Edwards:know? I, I'm wondering, in the San Diego Film Critics Society, we have an award we give for body of work. And I'm think I was thinking before I saw black bag, that dude, Jack Quaid has got to get that between Novocaine and and companion. But now I'm thinking, dude, does Soderberg have something else coming out this year? Because between Presence andBlack Bag, but Black Bag is kind of like a spy thriller, but not like a Bourne spy thriller. More like it's it's almost like a who done it, because at the very beginning of it, Michael Fassbender is he's meeting with his boss. His boss gives him a list of five names. Says one of these people is a trader who has stolen this thing that is integral to British survival. And he's Oh, and by the way, one of the names in that list is your wife, which his wife is played by Cate Blanchett. So he has to find the traitor, and it is four of his co workers who are both couples and his wife. So he starts with like a dinner party with the six of them, and he starts asking questions to try to re root out who's lying and stuff. And it goes to some crazy places, and keeps suspecting different people. And there's, there's lots of cool twists in it. And that's another one that's, like, there's no fat it's, it's, I think it's also 90 minutes, which is surprising, because it's kind of movie that you can totally see going for 215 when you hear the premise. But it's, it's, it's a lean little, you know, spy thriller, Soderbergh is really good about keeping
Jonathan Correia:it lean, like, especially focused, yeah, especially in the last like, when he's been on this, like, releasing, like, multiple movies in a year, like, they've been really lean, like Kimi and those other ones. And
James Jay Edwards:Presence is only like 80 minutes, isn't it? Or like 83 or 84 Yeah,
Jonathan Correia:yeah,
Jacob Davidson:less than an hour and a half, yeah? So yeah, that's,
James Jay Edwards:I mean, hey, I'm all for people making movies leaner. Like I say, I could have watched three Presences in the time it takes to watch one, The Brutalist, brutal Yeah, it's more, not just a clever name. And now let's bring in this episode, special guest. This episode, we have Will Rogers, who is the he's he does a little bit of everything, but the main thing that we've got him on for now is this book called survive the night, which we're gonna let him explain it, because it's a choose your own adventure coloring book. So let's so first of all, how you doing? Will thanks for being here.
Will Rogers:I'm doing great. Thank you for having me.
James Jay Edwards:Can you explain us, to us basically what this project is? Yeah,
Will Rogers:definitely. So Survive the Night. I look at it this way. It's a slasher. Choose your own adventure story. And I think we're all familiar with the idea of, like the Choose Your Own Adventure Right? Like you get some semblance of the setup of a story. You've got to choose A or B. Oh my god, if you pick option a turn to page 45 and oh my god, you died. So go back to that first page. Pick a different option. Let's figure out how not to die at every turn. But on top of that, it's a graphic novel. So it's a visual Choose Your Own Adventure, slasher, very gory, lots of splash pages of you know, people being ripped apart, eyes popping out of skulls, no spoilers. And then on top of that, it's a coloring book, so you can color in the panels. You can handle the gore. You can add extra Gore if you want. Why not? It's all in good fun.
James Jay Edwards:Make sure you got a good, sharp red crayon,
Will Rogers:exactly. So it's sort of all things in one. It's a choose your own adventure, gory slasher comic coloring book. Got it?
Jonathan Correia:Hell yeah, dude and
Jacob Davidson:I was curious, because, you know this, it covers so much ground in that being choose your adventure and a coloring book and a graphic novel, how did you come to the decision to kind of combine all those ideas in one and also make it, you know, for mature audiences? Because, you know, I remember doing a lot of choose your adventure books when I was good and, you know, they got pretty hairy, but, like, not nearly as gory as this.
Will Rogers:Yeah, no, that's true. Listen, hey, I wish, I wish I could sit here and take credit for the entire concept so I will it was all me. No, is this? This? This company inside edition, they already do all of these sort of, like more mature comic books, like coloring books for adult type concepts. And so I've got enough of a history in, you know, being a horror writer and a friend of mine suggested to the company that Will Rogers might be a good fit, because they were interested in doing something that was, like, pretty gory. But then, I will say, once we linked up together and we started batting around concepts, I really got into the notion of, like, all right, writing a coloring book. I'd never consider that before. I never thought of that before. Choose Your Own Adventure is cool. I've never done that either. That sounds daunting and challenging, and then the more that we were talking about, I was like, what if it functioned more and more like a like a graphic novel too, so that you've got panels on each page, so you can really have some time for the story to develop and have some characters drop in some fun horror references and stuff. I definitely tried to dial up the comic book angle a bit, but they they already had this horror coloring book pretty baked by the time they came to me. I just wrote the story that's
Jonathan Correia:awesome. I've I've always been a big fan of choose your own adventures, especially as a kid, and recently Star Trek put out warp your own way with lower decks. And so I'm getting back into it. So you caught me at a perfect time to get into this. But one of the things I found was with choose your own adventures. The going back and forth gets a little complicated if you don't have five or six bookmarks. And so I love this coloring concept, because I'm like, oh shit, now I know which way I actually did, because I'm coloring in it as I go. And so it's like, helping me navigate it a bit better. Absolutely,
Will Rogers:yeah, you kind of mark your that's interesting. I didn't even really consider that, to be honest. But yeah, you are sort of marking your progress. I will also say, for the ease of, like, navigating the book, when you hit a dead end, it should explicitly say, like, go back to this exact page so that there's less hunting and pecking, that kind of thing. I love that. Thank
Jonathan Correia:you for that. Yeah, that's
James Jay Edwards:what choose your own adventure. Never did,
Will Rogers:yeah, I remember, I remember with choose your own adventures like you have as much fun with them as you can, and then you inevitably burn out or something. We, I think we really struck a good chord of like, no this, take it at your own pace. Have a good time with it, and it gives you all the tools that you should need to be able to, you know, go forward, go back, make a new choice. All of that we're
James Jay Edwards:we're going a little out of order than we normally go. Because normally I like to start with the origin story, you know that the backgrounds. But I think we needed a, we needed a good overview of what this project is before we get any further. But, um, how did you get into you because, because you're a writer, a horror writer. How did you get into that? What? What was the point in your life when you're like, I want to do
Will Rogers:this. You know, it's, it's one of those things where there are sort of two answers to the question. The the like, most precious one, is that I remember being a kid writing books for myself, and, like, binding them with cardboard, you know what I mean? Like, I, for whatever reason my brain, I just always sort of gravitated to stories. And I, you know, I would rip off stories I wrote, you know, like a kid's version of, you know, Night of the dummy from goose bumps, where it was just a teddy bear that comes to life. Oh, how original. But so, to some degree, it feels like I've always been doing this, but when I really sort of applied myself and got more serious about like, because I've always wanted to be a writer, but when I went, you know what, I think the only thing I really care about is horror. Was probably a good decade ago or more, and I literally just started by being like, well, I'd gotten into podcasting by that point already, I've been a podcaster as well for boy like 13-14, years. And at a certain point in doing all these podcasts, I was I was loving the instant gratification of have a conversation. You can have that on the internet in five seconds. And then I started to realize, like, well, that's kind of at odds with the profession that I say I want, of being a writer, which is a slow process. Like so much they're they're, in some ways, totally antithetical podcasting, performing instant gratification, writing delayed gratification, private. You have to sit in a room and write and fill an empty page and about yeah about a decade ago or something, I was like, what if I just combine the two? And I just started writing stuff and releasing it online, and it feels like almost the second that I did that a decent handful of people took notice of my work, and before I knew it, I was getting sort of horror gigs, and I could not be happier being in the horror genre and writing, it's the thing I love the most, absolutely.
Jonathan Correia:I mean, it's the best genre. Obviously, it's our state, at least.
Will Rogers:Yeah, I kind of think it is. I've had conversations with people before about, like, you know, if you want to go see a movie, if I'm going to see, like, a comedy, like, I kind of know what I'm gonna get if I'm going to go see, you know, some, you know, Oppenheimer or something, I sort of know what I'm gonna get if I'm gonna go see a horror movie, I might be laughing during it. I might be, you know, thinking about, you know, incredible. Life and Death implications. I might just be having a gory like good time. I might be turning my brain off, whatever. But to me, the horror genre has more degrees of interest to me than a lot of other genres. The horror genre sort of encompasses everything, in my opinion, and the things that I remember most from childhood, even like the kids movies that I was watching, like, I've got, I've got kids now, and going back and revisiting some of those early Disney movies and stuff like, I You really can't overstate the importance of how scary a lot of those movies are. Like, the things that you remember most from your childhood is the scary stuff, and it's, it's partly, partly just because. One, it's probably some level of trauma, but, but two, I think it's almost like this human evolution thing of like, We're all afraid of everything. Embracing the horror genre, to me, has always meant sort of like continually evolving and bettering myself and inoculating myself against the real world horror is out there. Tell him Large
James Jay Edwards:Marge sent you. Yeah. How many of us got traumatized by that? That was a Pee Wee Herman movie. Yeah, you know. And even when you even when you do know what you're in for, you still don't know. Have you seen Heart Eyes? No, I have not yet. No, okay, hard eyes is the perfect blend of romantic comedy and slasher, and even knowing those two genres and you know what you're gonna get, it is still just the most fun.
Will Rogers:Yeah, there's a chocolate and peanut butter thing that for me and everything is subjective, but for me, I get it more when the movie starts as a horror, and I'm surprised by all the other, you know, layers of other genres that appear in it. Yeah, and
Jacob Davidson:on survive the night. I was wondering if there were any particular movies or stories that were influences on writing it. Oh, absolutely,
Will Rogers:yeah. I don't think anybody will be shocked by several references that are particularly people that might be familiar with my work. I have a tendency to reference like the same handful of things that I just obsess over, over and over and over. So the bare premise of this story of survive the night, because for it to be a choose your own adventure story, there needs to be like, a real, like mechanism that gets the plot in order. It's this group of friends who go to a cabin by a lake, and one of them the sort of like main character that you're trying to help survive that night, Kristen is one year prior her brother Bobby had been killed. And so are these murders right now connected to that? Or is it just happenstance? Even some of that, like the tropes of horror, I really enjoy reusing, because I think that they're comforting in a way. And even the environment of being by the lake is very Friday the 13th, the design of the killer is very familiar to other masked killers, even the names little, little things I think that horror fans will enjoy. I think, like, you'll be able to pick up when I reference things like scream in the book, and a lot of it's even in the art as well, like it's but yeah, I'm totally a product of my horror obsessions, and there are references throughout
Jonathan Correia:awesome. It's reminding me a lot of, do you remember they did a remaster of it not too long ago? Is it not NIGHT Watch the horror choose your scenario game where they did live action? Yes,
Will Rogers:yes. What is that called? And it was banned. But for some reason, it's like, I
James Jay Edwards:want to say, Night Watch. Was it? It's
Jonathan Correia:not night watch. I have it on my PlayStation. What is it? Yeah, that's gonna bond FMV, night track, trap, yeah. And it was, it was a part of the congressional hearings where it was that in Mortal Kombat, and they're like, we don't even have blood. It's people falling through trap doors, what's what do you mean?
Will Rogers:Yeah, what's the problem? But, yeah, I think there's, like a coziness to a certain type of horror. And I think for this book in particular, I wanted to nail that like, kind of, like comforting, cozy horror vibe, as much as it is like, again, literally, blood spurting, like heads getting crushed, like big splash pages for you to discover mayhem and Gore and I, and yet I sit here, I'm like, It's so cozy.
Jonathan Correia:Oh man, I can't wait to see like, how people are coloring it into because there's that, there's these clips, because invincible. It's a superhero show. It's very bloody. But in China, they have to censor it. So what they did was, instead of red blood, they made it white. And so there's one particular shot of battle beast. And if you know anything about battle beast, he really loves fighting. And it you can imagine what, what's being referenced with those gifts. But it's, it'll be interesting to see if people do blue. Green or red and all that.
Will Rogers:Yeah, sure. Honestly, you can do whatever you want. Yeah, who's to stop you? That's
James Jay Edwards:kind of another question is, is there a way, because everybody's going to color this differently? Do you have, like, any kind of, like, a, like, a website or something where people can kind of, like, share their work, of your work, you know, their interpretation of your work? Is there anything like that in the works? Or
Will Rogers:that's a great idea. That's such a good idea, I'm going to steal it immediately as good to say you can have that. Yeah, yeah, no, I think that's a great idea. Everybody out there. If you get the book, if you enjoy it, if you color it in an interesting way that you want to show off, tag me @themythtraveler, oh, you're
Jonathan Correia:going to get some really bad coloring in the out, out of the lines. For me, in that case,
Will Rogers:perfect. I want that terrible.
Jacob Davidson:Or like, I'm also thinking, like that kind of famous strong, bad email from Homestar Runner where he made his own coloring book and he just edited a coloring book. So like, some kids are playing in the sand. It's like Geraldine has buried Bob in the sand up to his neck. He has only an hour to live. I'm going
James Jay Edwards:to do every page. I'm going to color every page on a different drug. That's
Will Rogers:an art piece. Then you can like, I've been sober
James Jay Edwards:for almost 13 years, so no, that's a joke.
Will Rogers:Okay, yeah, give that a pass. Then
Jonathan Correia:I was about to say, that doesn't sound like a you challenge Jay. That sounds like something. It is not awesome. And so you have this book, and it's when this episode airs, it'll be coming out the next day. What other projects do you have in the works?
Will Rogers:Wow, I've got so I always have new episodes of my podcast, Guide to the Unknown coming out. The show that I host with my sister, also named Kristen. I named the protagonist of the Book who dies over and over after my beloved sister. Prevent my sister from dying. I'd have a good time coloring the pages when she does. But so Guide to the Unknown. We're always talking about, you know, urban legends and monsters, and that comes out every single Friday, and that's the project that I always think of first that I sort of like, it's my stable my like, hang my hat on you are
James Jay Edwards:speaking my language. I'm subscribing as soon as we're done here.
Will Rogers:Oh, it's so I have such a good time urban
James Jay Edwards:legends, folk tales, cryptids, that's me. Yes,
Will Rogers:yes. I always say, if it's even remotely spooky, we'll talk about it, because I never want to stop doing the show ever. But I also have a lot of fun stuff out there. Right this second I'm I wrote a podcast, an audio drama podcast called Blackwood. It's a six part series, very Blair Witch, inspired about kids in a small town, sort of dealing with this local urban legend. Very Jersey Devil, very Mothman. He's called the Black nice bug man. And I just reacquired the rights to that show. So I'm very interested in exploring, like continuing the story on my own,
James Jay Edwards:where can, can you find that? And you know, you said you required the rights, can you find what you've already done that six part? Oh, sure. Is it? Oh, yeah. Is it like on all the podcast apps? It
Will Rogers:is, yeah. If you just look up Blackwood, you'll find it. The logo is a big, spooky tree.
James Jay Edwards:I'm taking down a list of all these things I need to subscribe because that sounds like it's at my sounds like it's up my
Will Rogers:alley too, honestly, like I try to strike a chord where, like, I like, doing things that are just like fun, or really, like Scratch, kind of like, I always call that one, sort of, like a horror adventure series, you know, like it's, again, it's Just like, you know, not that I ever would claim that I I would like to try to reinvent the wheel someday, but I also just have these things that I love and feel are just like, so comforting and so Blackwood is very like. It's basically my obsession with Blair Witch, sort of like, manifested as my own kind of characters mixed with my own neuroses and oddities and all that stuff. I've got a number of stories on the No Sleep podcast. Oh, nice. Yeah. I've got a TV series that's coming out this year on Screambox that I can't really say much more about, but I'm very excited when I can awesome, and an audio drama that I directed, should be coming out now at probably around October this year, and it's inspired by a pretty cult graphic novel where it's, you know, basically monsters like the familiar Frankenstein, Dracula, Wolf Man versus Nazis. And so the Nazis all end up getting, you know, ripped apart, bludgeoned by the spoiler alert, but the monsters win.
Jonathan Correia:We always love and will support any Nazi killing fiction and projects out there. We're very pro punching Nazis on this, yeah, that
Will Rogers:project in particular, the longer it's gone on, the more I'm. Like, you know what? Actually, I've come back all the way, or back around to be like, this is more timely than ever. The monsters, the monsters win.
James Jay Edwards:We're we're very supportive. Sisu, Wrath of Becky, any, any, yeah, any movie where Nazis die. We're in here. Here's here's the question, Blair Witch, two, Book of Shadows, pro or Kong? Are you? Are you for or against?
Will Rogers:Oh, do I have to just make the statement, or can I qualify?
James Jay Edwards:Well, here, here. Let me preface this by saying, I love it. I think it's an amazing movie and and I think it's better because it's a, it's a sequel to the hype, not the movie itself. So sure, just so you know that the question is kind of loaded, because your answer, my entire image of you is going to depend on your answer, but no pressure. So
Will Rogers:if I just simply say that, it's the second best Blair Witch movie, are we satisfied with that. I have, we've, we've talked at like, to the point that my audience, the Guide to the Unknown audience, has gone like, can you guys stop talking about Blair Witch? We literally got that. We literally got somebody that was like, you gotta stop doing this. Because I don't know. I'm convinced that, like 99% of people don't know that the Blair Witch movies are just the tip of the iceberg of like, books and comics and video games and lore. So we have painstakingly gone through almost everything at this point, to the point that I have. I think, if I think literally, if you go to skip my website, is scary fun, dot fun. If you go to scary fun, dot fun, slash Blair Witch. I think you get, like, a bunch of episodes where we go crazy on that franchise. I
James Jay Edwards:don't think you can fully appreciate the Blair Witch Project without having been around when it came out, you know, in 1999 when, because you could experience, like you said, everything below the surface, because there was so much lore and mythology, there's never going to be another project. No, there's, there's never gonna, you're never gonna be able to fool the public like that. Because also, at the time, everyone thought it was real. I mean, if you went to Blair witch.com It was real. But then you go to the hackson website, and they would lift the curtain and they would let you know it wasn't. But, yeah, you would have to go to the chat rooms. You would have to you'd have to do your own work. You'd have to watch the Sci Fi Channel special, you know, to get all the mythology and and it's brilliant. I mean, I don't think any people who don't dive into that mythology truly appreciate how great the movie itself is,
Will Rogers:I couldn't agree more. And on top of that, I also consider the Blair Witch entire franchise as being like a master class in letting a story world expand. I love the idea that the feature film is just a part of the bigger fabric of that world. I'm very obsessed with that concept of, like, even with Blackwood, we ended up producing some, like, bonus material images that sort of augment listening to the show I I love that I'm obsessed with. It would be wonderful to just be like, here's the project that I'm gonna tackle for like, the rest of my life, and just like JRR token with Lord of the Rings and making like The Silmarillion or whatever, forever, just like continue to flesh out the world. If anything, it's like a travesty that it has not continued under the sort of like guidance of the original creators. Having said that, if I can brag for a minute,
Jacob Davidson:please brag away. We love bragging, especially
Will Rogers:about actually not to contribute to the franchise. I there's, I don't think many people even know about it, but they we there was a, like a tabletop game, basically, like every month, this company would send you the latest episode of an ongoing Blair Witch story. For about a year, there were like 12 episodes, as we called them, 12 boxes of this ongoing story. And I was one of the writers. I directed all the, not all, but a lot of the media for the game and stuff. So technically, technically, I've contributed to the Blair Witch World. Well,
Jacob Davidson:still counts. Yeah, that's
James Jay Edwards:Yeah,
Will Rogers:true. I I'm always so i think i hedge my bets on that one, because I'm like, but I'm not Edwards Sanchez, I'm not, not Dan Myrick. I'm not any of the originals, you know. But
Jonathan Correia:I mean, still the hunt, the hunt a killer series that you're talking about with the with the gaming thing, is still building on that myth, though, is building out that world and all that and so, yeah, as as the Blair Witch, expert on the on the panel right now, I have to ask the video game. I started it, I got, like, I think a quarter or halfway through, do I need? Should I keep going? You're
Will Rogers:talking about the most recent video game, yeah, the 119 Yeah, the PS, four one is what I got. What made you stop?
Jonathan Correia:ADHD, I it happens with video games. Like, every time someone's like, you play Red Dead too. I'm like, Yeah, I got, like, eight hours into. They're like, you only got eight hours into? I'm like, ADHD, I got into other things. I forgot some of the controls. Tried to get back into it. Could it, you know, I forgot where I was in the story. It happens all the time. Yeah,
Will Rogers:I would argue you could probably watch some videos online. I think, I think it's like the 2019 game, for my money, is kind of like, what if Blair Witch was really just kind of a Silent Hill side story, if you like, could do tears of cannon. It's not, it's not even touching that, like, top primary cannon, in my opinion. But yeah, I've got, oh, boy, do I have thoughts about that game. I'm actually, like, on the on the precipice of diving back into that game to do a little research, to cover it on the show. And I'm like, a little anxious about having to go back in. Gotcha, I was not necessarily the biggest fan of the game. No, it's
Jonathan Correia:and I always find it funny, like, me not finishing a video game is the same argument as, like, wait, you fell asleep during the movie. So it's bad. It's like, No, it has nothing to do with the quality. It's just, I was just
Will Rogers:tired. I just have, if you could watch videos and get it? Yeah?
Jonathan Correia:Everyone like, oh, until dawn. Must be so scary. If you've never finished it, it's No, literally, I keep ADHD out. So I have five different saves because I keep forgetting where I am, what I'm doing, what's going on. So I've restarted it. Yeah, I get that. I always kill the squirrel, though. I always want to see what nature is going to do to me, much to the chagrin of my partner, who was genuinely shocked the first time I played she's they were like, You had no hesitation shooting that squirrel. I'm like, Well, I figured it was gonna cause some, like, bad stuff and, like, it's a horror thing. I want to see everyone die horribly. You know, it's also
Will Rogers:a digital squirrel. It's different if I walk out the front door, and if I walk out the front door and suddenly shoot a squirrel, we have a lot to talk about, and I get it. No, I'm just shooting squirrel. Yeah, yeah. I'm running over bunnies and Red Dead Redemption on my horse. It's all right. It's okay. I
James Jay Edwards:remember I was, I was teaching my wife how to play Grand Theft Auto once. This is, like, years and years and years ago. It might have been Grand Theft Auto three. I don't even one of the real old ones, but, um, and I was showing her how you can walk up and just punch people. And she's playing, and she and she goes up to a guy in a suit, and I'm on not that guy, and she punches him. And those are the mafia guys. So he, of course, pulls out a gun.
Will Rogers:There are repercussions. You got to know who to punch. Yeah, yeah. Always punch down and grab
James Jay Edwards:that. You punch cops or guys in suits. Everybody else is fair game. Oh, man.
Jonathan Correia:I remember my grandparents walked in on us trying to play Grand Theft Auto, and so it was suddenly like, turn into a driving simulator and accidentally ran over someone. And they're like, You just killed someone. How could you do that? And they're like, oh, they were a prostitute. It's fine, I guess, right, it's a video game. Grandma, why did they allow you to kill people? And it's like, this isn't even scratching the surface of the violence of this.
Will Rogers:You really want to see something, grandma. Show you a good time.
Jacob Davidson:And back on Blair Witch Oh, because we're fans here. Have you seen the Scooby Doo project?
Will Rogers:Oh yes, oh yes. That is like a work of art, genuinely like that was a labor of love for the folks who made that. I am so impressed. Like doing the sort of like Cell animation on top of live footage to put Scooby Doo in the woods and running through the house. I'm kind of amazed that they never tried to do anything similar with that animation in live action, kind of like that, because I actually also just genuinely thought it was cool.
Jonathan Correia:Yeah, so many Scooby Doo projects out there. I'm surprised they haven't tried to, like, expand on that more outside of just like, because it was just supposed to be commercials for Scooby Doo coming to Cartoon Network finally. And then, yeah, that's right, they took the assignment. Are you saying
James Jay Edwards:you want Book of Shaggy Yeah, someone write it. There you go, pitch
Jacob Davidson:somebody called Cartoon Network. Yeah,
Jonathan Correia:you lean into shaggy as a god mythos that the internet has
James Jay Edwards:created. Yep, all right. Well, will thanks for joining us today. This come back anytime. We will talk at length about Blair Witch Project. We will talk about, I will talk at length at crypt about cryptids, urban legends, anything spooky. So, yeah, thank you for joining us. Where, what socials you got so people, any of the stuff that you couldn't talk about that you want to how can they find out about
Will Rogers:that? Yeah, follow me @themythtraveler. I'm on blue sky, Instagram, I guess, Facebook. Technically also follow @GTTUPod, that's the guide to the unknown podcast, which is everywhere. It's apple podcast, Spotify all that stuff. But I always try to post when I've got new things that are coming out. I've got, I always have a number of irons in the fire. I've got really fun stuff coming out this year, for sure. I love doing this. It's harder to get me to stop talking. This was a blast. Thank you.
James Jay Edwards:Well, thanks for being here. This is, this is great. This is a great interview. And everybody go and check out Survive the Night by Will Rogers a choose your own adventure coloring book, and you don't have to color before you change turn the page, but it might be more fun that way. As for us, our theme song is by Restless Spirit, so check them out. And our artwork is by Chris Fisher, so go check him out. And you can find us on all the socials, @EyeOnHorror, or at ihorror.com which is the website we call home, and we will see you in a couple of weeks. So for me, James Jay Edwards,
Jacob Davidson:I'm Jacob Davison.
Jonathan Correia:I'm Jonathan Correia,
Will Rogers:and I'm Will Rogers Survive the Night!
James Jay Edwards:Keep your Eye On Horror.
