Brainwave Entrainment: The Return! - Another Conversation with Ryan Page, Part I
When we last spoke with writer/musician/modular synth superfreak Ryan Page, Angus Scrimm was still alive and Eighties nostalgia was at its most undead. (It still is.) Two years later, Page has even more creative projects to put out in the world. Once again, we found some time between parenting duties - which now apply to both of us - and the rest of our busy schedules to sit and talk about some of those projects, and anything else that came to mind. Caution: Bigfoot ahead.
Blood & Spirit: I like to ask this of artists/creators who are new or relatively new parents: has becoming a parent affected how you view your output, and if so, how?
Ryan Page: Not at all, haha. I think it affects how much time I spend doing it, and how much value I place on that time. But right now I'm taking time off work anyway, so it's not much of a difference. Honestly I had shifted over so much of my work to things that I could do at home anyway, that it's been a relatively easy transition. Moving toward writing has been nice, in that regard.
B&S: Alternatively, do you think having a child has inspired anything you've worked on, even indirectly?
RP: Well, I spent a lot of time thinking about the... ethics of bringing a child into the world, and that required a lot of soul-searching. And, indirectly this led me to reading a lot of strange anti-natalist writing, namely (Thomas) Ligotti's The Conspiracy Against the Human Race, which inspired certain aspects of “Fertility Rite”, the short story of mine that's getting published.
B&S: Yes, let's talk about that story.
“Fertility Rite” will appear in Centipede Press’ forthcoming Weird Fiction Review #9, which can be ordered here soon.
The beginning reminded me of the best parts of the original X-Files run. There's a process to follow, but the sense of dread builds quickly.
RP: That's interesting. On a somewhat related note, Ligotti apparently wrote a spec script for the original X-Files. That would have been truly bizarre.
B&S: That would have been great. Or terrible! Like Jodorowsky's Dune.
RP: It was strange to read, sort of fan-fic, but from such a strong personal perspective/style. Regarding “Fertility Rite”, I was originally inspired by Lovecraft and William Hope Hodgson, specifically Hodgson's Carnaki the Ghostfinder character. I liked the idea of a supernatural investigator, but what can you do with that? It's just so ludicrous and unbelievable. I quickly realized you had to reverse the trope of the ‘punished skeptic’ that's been a part of horror literature for at least a hundred years.
B&S: Yeah, you want to treat your characters with respect but with this angle it could devolve into 'Ghost Hunters on Discovery Channel' in a second. I think you toe the line but keep things on an intelligent tip.
RP: Yeah, in a way, I was disgusted with all of the cheap ways shows like that try and undermine rational thinking just to get you to suspend disbelief.
B&S: Night vision and third-rate music will make Bigfoot real.
RP: All of these Amityville sequels where someone acts like a rational, skeptical, normal person and we are expected to hate them and delight in their punishment, it's pretty hard to tolerate. Or, alternatively, they see something that is very obviously real and they deny that it exists because "science can't account for this!" I really just wanted to murder those tropes publicly. Anyway, that's where the story started.
B&S: That's a great jumping-off point, though. A lot of people want to champion SCIENCE because it makes them feel smarter than others. But they pick and choose what science they want to believe, much like the cafeteria Christians they like to mock. It's not much different. Rational thought only works if you apply it uniformly.
RP: Right, and skepticism is only real skepticism if you react to new evidence. I tend to think those with a "scientific" perspective are open to those kind of things. Whereas some ghost hunter is looking for things that come from generic tropes. It's an irony I exploit.
B&S: One would hope. There's a real opportunity for good stories from that perspective, and I see that in “Fertility Rite”.
RP: Yeah, I should say that I don't have a lot of faith in people to fulfill that expectation, but it’s just funny to me that there is always this jump to the "supernatural" rather than an expanded view of the natural world.
B&S: I've always said, one of my greatest wishes is for concrete proof of something, anything, to be discovered. If Bigfoot was real, I would cry tears of joy.
RP: Oh of course, the idea that reasonable people would hate the idea of an undiscovered species or what have you is so silly. Can you imagine if there was any real evidence that somehow we wouldn't see it? Speaking of which - there's a Bigfoot museum down the road from me. I really need to go.
B&S: That's right, you're in Bigfoot country! So earlier, we were talking about how far the horror genre has come in the last decade.
RP: Yeah, horror has completely recovered from the 00s. It is really incredible. I was making a list of the best horror films of the past decade, and it is amazing how many have come out in the last several years.
B&S: This month alone has some great offerings. Two years ago I wrote a post about how much Netflix sucked regarding horror content for October. They must have read it, because this year is stacked.
RP: That's partially what inspired me to write, because during the last major moment when horror was on the rise in film it had a literary equivalent (T.E.D. Klein, (Stephen) King, (Robert) McCammon, (Clive) Barker, Ramsey Campbell etc.). Now I'm not sure where the literature is, but holy cow is there a lot of interesting stuff happening. Sadly my internet is so slow out here I can't even use Netflix, what's it like this year?
B&S: Gareth Evans' Apostle just dropped this past Friday - it's beautifully shot and a fantastic slow burn. Netflix also just released the first season of a Haunting Of Hill House series that is (so far) really good.
RP: I'm curious, what do you think is driving it? I'm wondering if it’s a convergence of the availability of interesting films, the return of low/mid budget film-making and the availability of new equipment.
B&S: I do believe streaming platforms have had a huge positive influence on genre filmmaking. I've heard some directors talk about it specifically, like Adam Green and Joe Lynch.
RP: My students are very aware of films that it felt like nobody was aware of before streaming. I mean, Joe Bob Briggs is back for fuck's sake!
B&S: I heard an interview with Roger Corman, and even he said this is the best time to make a movie. You won't make any real money, but you can get a movie made more easily now than ever before. Plus you have Shudder, which is 100% horror content.
RP: Corman would know, that guy has seen everything. Yeah, it's a bit like a return to the days of independent video stores, where you have less of an influence of taste makers. And of course, yes, in some ways it’s totally curated, but I honestly think it’s partially because they were just indiscriminately scooping up cheap horror to get content initially.
B&S: Within the fanbase, it's still communal. The people that eat up the stuff we like still gravitate towards the same things.
RP: I will say that I do think horror and genre fiction is a great place for politics, as long as it’s handled correctly.
B&S: What was the last thing you saw that impressed you?
RP: Hereditary. That is a phenomenal film. I don't even like mentioning it to people who will ask me to watch it with them. It is so suffocating. I will say, having read The Lesser Key of Solomon, I knew exactly what was going to happen, about half-way through, but the fact that they went through with it was incredible.
Not to hammer the point too hard, but I was thinking about this, and how, for example, you don't have to share Lovecraft's views on race to find things that derived from it terrifying. I think that's the mark of good horror. “The Shadow Over Innsmouth” for example.
B&S: No, it's an important distinction to make.
RP: Oh, we haven't mentioned the new Halloween and Suspiria yet.
B&S: Yes! I am very excited about Halloween. Suspiria, I'm still on the fence from the trailers. Maybe because the original Suspiria is such a weird idiosyncratic movie.
RP: Yeah, I tend to break the same way. When I was working at Electronic Arts I was talking to one of the voice actors who is working on Halloween and he seemed genuinely excited about what he had seen from it.
I think Suspiria will succeed if it tells the same outline of the story, but is stylistically very different. That's the impression I got from the trailers. The only thing I didn't like is that the soundtrack was very boring. They should have hired Goblin... or me!
