Episode 023: Hellraiser Podcast Crossover | Occupy Midian

Peter and Phil, the good people from the Hellraiser Podcast interview us, Jose, Ryan and Crystal Raen about Occupy Midian and the Cabal Cut of Nightbreed.  We talk about lots of other stuff too.

Transcript Below

DAVIS: So we’re now talking to some of the guys from Occupy Midian. Hello guys, how are you?

DANHAUSER: Oh, great.

LEITAO: Fine.

RAEN: Good. How are you?

DAVIS: Very well, thank you. So let’s talk a little bit about how this got started then. What was your first interaction with being in the group? With the whole movement?

DANHAUSER: I guess Mad Monster Party is the event where it all got started. Crystal you were there with me for that one. Not together, but we were both—

RAEN: Yeah, we hadn’t met yet. So to speak.

DANHAUSER: Yeah. Jose and I had started this podcast in January. I thought I’m going to fly out to Charlotte, NC to go see this screening of Nightbreed. I had missed the Horror Hound screening and I really wanted—and I thought that was a once in a lifetime chance to see all of that extra footage. So I wanted to see that again.

DAVIS: Yeah.

DANHAUSER: I bought my tickets and as things started going by we started to learn that this wasn’t the same thing as Horror Hound and that they had put together a real movie. Horror Hound was just—they just took the footage from all those tapes and strung them altogether.

DAVIS: Yeah, so we hear. What was your reaction to the Cabal Cut as it was then?

DANHAUSER: Oh, it was amazing! It was amazing.

RAEN: Yeah, I got chills from just watching it.

NORTH:Yeah.

RAEN: Phenomenal.

DANHAUSER: Yeah.

LEITAO: I should clarify that I’m the only person here who hasn’t watched The Cabal Cut yet.

NORTH: Aw.

DAVIS: Oh, no!

LEITAO: Much to my regret.

DAVIS: You have a great treat coming to you.

LEITAO: Oh, yes. I’m sure. I’m sure. I’m planning on going—I was just telling them (Ryan & Crystal) about the Manchester screening. I was thinking about going, but there’s some personal matters that might prevent me from being there. But I’ll do my best.

DAVIS: It’s doing the rounds until January so they say. So you’ve got some more time to catch it.

LEITAO: Oh, yeah. I think it’s going to be on Sri Lanka too and Mexico. So who knows?

(Jose laughs)

NORTH: Whoa.

(everyone laughs)

LEITAO: Next time I go to the grocery store I might stop by Sri Lanka and watch the movie.

(Ryan laughs)

DAVIS: Why not? There are no plans to screen it in Portugal at the moment, then?

LEITAO: Well, we’re still working on it. There’s a film fest here called Fantasporto in which I’ve been in touch with the directors of the festival. I’ve sent Russell Cherrington a PDF application. If we can deliver that until December so the directors of the festival say, “Hey, I’m up for that if you’re sending me that stuff.” So, I’ll try and get Russell work on that application and we’ll see what happens. It would be nice to have in February of next year—in Portugal. That’d be great.

DAVIS: Yeah!

LEITAO: We have a long tradition of Fantasporto of premiering Clive Barker movies here and they’ve actually brought Doug Bradley to Portugal three or four times. They even screened movies by Frazer Lee who with Doug Bradley as well doing On Edge and Red Lines. So who knows maybe we can make this happen, but it’s just a matter of delivering that application on time.

NORTH: Well, good luck with that.

DAVIS: And how come you were there Crystal at the initial screening?

RAEN: Honestly, my finance has loved the movie forever and he introduced me to it. And we happen to see it was only two and half hours away and we had a free weekend. So, we went down to see it.

NORTH: Okay. Cool.

DAVIS: So how did you get involved in the whole Occupy Midian movement then?

RAEN: I was really moved by Anne Bobby’s speech about Occupy Midian and I actually created my own blog and wanted to bring more notice to the film. I got on Facebook and saw that they’d (Ryan and Jose) started their own Occupy Midian group and I asked to join and they allowed me too. From there everything else just kind of fell into place.

DAVIS: Oh, okay.

NORTH: That’s great.

DAVIS: So you kind of got into it through your finance and loved it yourself when you saw it.

RAEN: Oh, yes, I absolutely loved it.

NORTH: And Ryan can I ask you, how did you get involved? Did you start it up unofficially or did you get involved with them and ask them for your permission to do it, how did it work for you?

DANHAUSER: It was kind of a little bit of both I mean we so I was I was sort of you know how you guys kind of do the same thing I had a little field recorder and you know we had in the line to get autographs I did a little interview with Craig Sheffer and Anne Bobby and they and they sort of offhandedly Craig Sheffer had said, “Hey if they don’t allow this to get put on DVD people are going to occupy Morgan Creek.” And then Anne Bobby said, “Occupy Midian!” Then she’s said that’s a really good idea and I said, “You heard it here first.” She then said, “No, no, it was my idea!” That’s where the name came from.

(Laughter)

DANHAUSER: And then later I think she told Russell (Cherrington) and Mark (Miller) that in in the bar that same night. I called up or I was Facebook chatting with Jose and Roger (Boyes) and they got you know and we I said hey this you know I think this name is really good I think that that we all kind of agree that we should get we should run with this and Roger started a Facebook group and we all started sort of madly adding every single person that we could think of and it’s just I’ve done going exponentially from there.

LEITAO: Yes, indeed. We also got the Twitter started. We got a Gmail going and we got the petition written and posted and so that was it was basically just we just thought well you know let’s use social media so we were like let’s see you know what we can do here and I think by the time we had finished adding our friends that we knew were Clive Barker fans to the group we might have had already like a hundred people there, right?

DANHAUSER: Yeah.

LEITAO: I know that most of my Facebook friends are Clive Barker fans that I know from you know previous online forums and stuff like that so we just started adding everybody.

DANHAUSER: We did talk to Russell and Mark and we made them admins right away. So it made it an official movement and I think that’s helped us a lot. If it had just been a regular fan movement it might have fizzled out in the beginning.

LEITAO: Because Ryan knows Mark Miller, they’re actually friends. So it was easy to get in touch with them and get their contacts and get this thing going.

DAVIS: That’s great. I guess it’s in the modern world’s social media where now it’s easy. Can you imagine back in the day where it’s just a forum, all you’d would doing is talking about it on a forum.

DANHAUSER: Yeah.

DAVIS: You’d be like, “Okay, we’re trying get something going, but who would hear about it?”

DANHAUSER: It’s not that long far back. Like even five years.

DAVIS: No.

DANHAUSER: In 2009 they tried to do the same thing with a petition that has nine hundred signatures on it. Then we had another member that just came up and he said. “Hey guys I started a petition in 2009” and he had one with 300 signatures on it.

LEITAO: Yeah.

DANHAUSER: So, it’s amazing how much more you can do now. I don’t know how much of it is luck or how much work we put into it.

LEITAO: I think it was just doing the right thing at the right time. It’s a combination of factors. When the tapes were discovered in 2009 and they were announced and screened by Revelations Phil and Sarah Stokes who are you know wonderful people who run this beautiful website. I keep in touch with them regularly and immediately they were like, “Hey, please send us emails saying how much you want to watch this movie and how much you want it be released. And send it on Twitter and on email.” So, people were sending Revelations all these things that were compiled on a big long page in their website. But unfortunately for you know it didn’t go very far because I guess that there wasn’t the whole mechanism behind it of screenings and everything to promote it more. At the time Russell Cherrington hadn’t gotten ahold of the of the footage yet so I think he started working on the Cabal cut in 2010. So, it just kind of fizzled out for a bit because that the last word from Morgan Creek was, “Well, we can’t find the footage.” Then then they allowed it to be screened at Horror Hound Weekend.

DANHAUSER: Right. They then figured out that was not the best way to screen the movie. It wasn’t a really good experience.

LEITAO: They still have the lead in reels into the actual footage. So that the movie was always being interrupted by that. But then of course Russell Cherrington stepped into the picture and he got that Cabal Cut going. Of course, this immediately made it more appealing for fans to watch it. I guess the Mad Monster Party is the real reason to come back with the whole Occupy Midian name that Anne Bobby came up with and we were like let’s get it started then.

DANHAUSER: And those people that ran the Mad Monster Party Convention contacted Mark and said, “Hey I remember you guys did that screening at Horror Hound and we want to show that too.”  And Mark said “You know we actually have something even better.” The people at Mad Monster Party called Morgan Creek and asked if it was okay to show the screening for the Cabal Cut which they’d never heard of before. They then got permission. And from then for a while every event had to get into individual permission to screen the movie.

NORTH: All right.

DAVIS: Is that still the case now?

DANHAUSER: No, they gave them permission to screen it as much as they want.

DAVIS: So, it’s now Mark and Russell who have the say of where it gets shown?

DANHAUSER: Yes, but they have to be there. So that’s the caveat. They can’t do it or show it theatrically like you would a normal movie.

DAVIS: Oh, okay.

LEITAO: I think that the reason they have to be there too is because this is a movie that has to be properly contextualized and introduced and it’s not something that you can just immediately sit down and say well I’m going to have a cinematic experience.

DAVIS: It’s more for the fans because as we said in our recent podcast you couldn’t sit down as a normal person and watch it.

NORTH: It has to have an introduction with Russell’s saying, “Alright guys, it’s going go into you know as he calls it ‘porno quality’ every now and again. But once you’ve got that then you completely buy into it and it’s a wonderful experience.

DANHAUSER: Yeah.

LEITAO: Yeah, absolutely.

DAVIS: So, there’s an issue now to get the film restored.

NORTH: Yes, have you heard if they’ve found any of the actual film to put these bits back in.

DANHAUSER: No.

LEITAO: No.

DANHAUSER: We also don’t think they’re trying very hard. Or at least that’s kind of the hope. That it exists somewhere and that they’re just not looking for it.

LEITAO: Right. We were discussing that in our last episode of the Clive Barker Podcast and I think that I was the most angry and vocal one about this. How is it possible that a movie disappears like this? All the negatives, all the elements, and all of these special effects composite shots all that stuff has to be somewhere. It just can’t have simply vanished from the face of the earth. I’m thinking that as the process moves along that maybe at one point they’re going to be like, “Well, we’re going to release this so let’s just go in and see what we can find because I’m imagining that Morgan Creek doesn’t have the movie, but probably 20th Century Fox has it. I don’t know.

DAVIS: I saw recently on the Blade Runner thing they almost chucked out all the Blade Runner footage.

LEITAO: Yes.

DANHAUSER: Yeah.

DAVIS: And that was a super successful film.

NORTH: If it’s a case of them that they can’t be bothered to look for it and surely you know they could give Mark or Russell permission to go down into their archives, and I’m sure they would be happily spend a fortnight looking through this stuff.

LEITAO: Yes.

DANHAUSER: And it may be more likely that it’s at 20^th Century Fox rather than at Morgan Creek.

NORTH: Yeah.

DANHAUSER: And so there’s two paths that the movie can take right now. One is if they never find the footage then they’d have to bake the VHS tapes and they can get the absolute best quality version of that footage that they can. But you do it once and you play it once and it’s gone. They would have to record it too. Then they make that version of the movie. Or if they’re going to start all over again if somebody finds the footage and I think they’re hoping that that happens too so they don’t want to invest all the money in restoring this version if the film elements still exists somewhere.

DAVIS: Yeah, of course.

DANHAUSER: It’s like a hundred thousand dollars I think to restore the version that we have right now.

NORTH: Right.

LEITAO: I think it’s around that. I think Russell has mentioned once or twice that he the estimated amount would be around one hundred and fifty thousand dollars. I don’t know how that breaks down, but the fact is that I think this might not be crowd funded after all because there are talks being done with actual people interested in producing the restoration. For now I’m going to let Russell announce that, but there are people interested in producing this. So that’s a good thing.

DANHAUSER: And people are like why aren’t you doing a Kickstarter. I mean they had planned to do that, but that’s why.

NORTH: Yeah.

DAVIS: Yeah.

LEITAO: And just for the people out there who don’t know, tape baking is a technique where the magnetic tape is subjected to a kind of treatment inside a kind of an oven and a controlled humidity. One of the reasons why the tape degrades over time is because sometimes the magnetic elements get stuck to the back of the other tape that’s on top of it because it’s all rolled up in a neat roll. And also the water the humidity that that gets into the tape. When you bake the tape part of that layer of magnetic tape that’s been stuck on the back of the other loop gets put back onto the magnetic tape and also the humidity is taken out. It becomes a little better quality. I think one of the movies that was restored this way was the work print of Alien 3.

DAVIS: I was about to say that because Russell even mentioned that at the screening which we were at. He said the worst-case scenario we’ll have to go and do what we did with Alien 3. That made me think well I’ve seen that and that’s actually quite good quality.

DANHAUSER: Yeah, it’s really hard to tell the difference. It’s not really hard, but it’s very close.

DAVIS: If they can do that as well as the Alien 3 one that would look acceptable.

DANHAUSER: Yeah.

LEITAO: Also we can’t forget that Phil and Sarah Stokes are working on a book about the production process of Nightbreed so that’s also something to look forward to.

DAVIS: We hear there’s a documentary film being made about the whole thing?

DANHAUSER:Yes. Yeah.

LEITAO: Yes, indeed.

DANHAUSER: I think the final product there’s a whole lot of speculation on what’s going to be. But what we know that they’re aiming for is a double-disc Blu-Ray set that has a high definition version of the original theatrical movie and the Cabal Cut in whatever form that’s going to take.

DAVIS: Well, it’s about time.

NORTH: It’s kind of hilarious because we’re at a point where we’re basically trying to convince a studio that we want to give them money. Just give us the product and we’ll give you money.

(laughter)

DANHAUSER: Yeah, and it’s funny how we were you know we we’re all celebrating when Morgan Creek said that they were going to give us or you know Occupy Midian or and you know Russell and Mark permission to raise money to make the movie. And it’s funny the world that we live in now that we would think that was a neat thing. You know it’s like, “Hey you know we’re giving you permission to do our job for us.”

LEITAO: Yeah.

DAVIS: It’s a complete no-risk thing for the studio they’re just like well if you guys get the interest. You guys advertise it. You guys make it good. And then we’ll just say, “Yeah, okay you can do that, and we’ll take the money.”

RAEN: It’s definitely better than just a flat-out no.

DANHAUSER: Yeah, they could’ve just said ‘that movie was a flop and we don’t want anything to do with it. So, no forget it.’

DAVIS: Yeah.

NORTH: Yeah, absoluetley.

DANHAUSER: But I think they are seeing that there’s that there’s a market.

LEITAO: Absolutely.

NORTH: Well, they never released the DVD over here in the UK.

DAVIS: No.

DANHAUSER: Yeah, and that’s so crummy.

NORTH: Yeah.

DAVIS: It has been on TV over here but that’s it! It’s crazy!

NORTH: It’s so weird.

LEITAO: In Portugal we had Nightbreed come out on rental VHS, but I don’t think it ever came out in direct sale tape or even DVD.

DAVIS: I remember seeing it as rental VHS as well, but I don’t think I remember seeing it in any shops to buy.

LEITAO: I actually bought the rental VHS from a video store back in the 90’s after they were like, “Well, this movie has run it’s allotted time so we’re thinking about selling it do you want to buy it?” I was like “yes” and luckily it was not that used. Or sadly. So, I ended up buying the movie.

DANHAUSER: Yeah, my first one was on laserdisc.

DAVIS: Ha, ha!

DANHAUSER: I still have it on laserdisc now.

DAVIS: I have Hellraiser on laserdisc, but it was an impulse buy only because I don’t have a laserdisc player.

(laughter)

DAVIS: But I’ve got the disc on my shelf. It looks amazing.

DANHAUSER: Which one do you have do you have? The one with the picture of the discs on the sides or do you have the box set one?

DAVIS: I’ve got the big box set with the signed script in it from Clive.

RAEN: Oh, cool.

DANHAUSER: Oh yeah. That’s a really nice set. It has that raised Pinhead profile on the cover.

DAVIS: Yeah, it’s gorgeous. So, I had to buy it, but I haven’t watched it yet.

LEITAO: Yeah.

DAVIS: It looks amazing.

NORTH: Crystal you said you’d just gotten into Nightbreed through your fiancé, yeah?

RAEN: Yeah.

NORTH: Initially. But did you have any interest in other Clive Barker stuff? Or was that just a complete new thing? Because obviously we’re all like chatting like we know about Clive Barker and we love him, but is it completely new to you?

RAEN: It’s very new to me. He introduced me to Clive Barker when we were dating through Weaveworld. That’s the first book I read and I’m slowly reading more and more of his stuff. I just I love it and I’ve been introduced to a few more of his movies. Ritchie’s had me watch Midnight Meat Train and Dread, but I haven’t watched the original Hellraiser yet. But it’s on the agenda.

DAVIS: Oh, man! You’ve watched Dread before Hellraiser! This is crazy!

LEITAO: I can’t believe you’ve watched Dread before you watch Hellraiser too.

NORTH: You’ve got a treat coming to you.

DAVIS: I’m really happy for you because you’ve got that first viewing coming to you.

RAEN: We’re in the middle of moving so it’s packed up in a box somewhere and I would have watched it already so.

DANHAUSER: Didn’t you say it would be interesting to watch the movies in reverse chronological order.

DAVIS: Yes.

DANHAUSER: So they go from terrible to good.

(laughter)

LEITAO: I don’t think I could watch Hellraiser: Revelations again.

DAVIS: Yeah if you watched Revelations and then Hellworld you probably would want to give up then.

DANHAUSER: Revelations makes me hit things whenever I watch it.

NORTH: There’s been a big debate in fandom about which is worse Revelations or Hellworld and it seems to be people prefer Revelations to Hellworld.

DAVIS: I don’t understand.

DANHAUSER: It makes no sense to me. I don’t like either one.

DAVIS: Yeah, I disdain them both.

LEITAO: So that’s an interesting question.

DANHAUSER: Revelations didn’t look like a real movie.

NORTH: No it didn’t. And the acting was so poor that I could barely watch it.

DAVIS: What Revelations looked like for me was like some students at school were like, “Okay you can do a little video project and the students wanted to do a little Hellraiser film.” That’s what it seemed like to me.

DANHAUSER: It seems like they took things from a remake script because there were things that happened in Hellraiser that they sort of tried in the first Hellraiser that they tried to cram into this new story.

NORTH: Yeah.

DAVIS: Yeah.

DANHAUSER: And the parents were all looked like they were the same age as their children.(laughter)

LEITAO: I would say the only redeeming factor between those two movies is that Doug Bradley is in Hellworld. So yeah that’s the only reason why one would watch it.

NORTH: There’s Lance Hendrickson as well.

LEITAO: Yeah. Lance Hendrickson of course.

DANHAUSER: Hellworld looked like a corny early 2000’s movie.

DAVIS: But it was a movie though.

DANHAUSER: Yeah, I don’t know. The plot wasn’t good, but it had an actual sort of plot.

NORTH: Yeah, I think out of the two, I think Hellword—we’ve said it before you know was kind of fun, but rubbish. I hated it, but it was kind of funny to watch. Whereas Revelations made me angry.

DANHAUSER: Yeah, you can’t even enjoy that movie. I think that’s the difference.

LEITAO: And just going back to Crystal and the fact that she is relatively new to this. I always felt a little jealousy when she told me like. “Oh, I just watched Nightbreed for the first time a couple of months ago and now I’m going to watch the Cabal Cut.

(Crystal laughs)

LEITAO: I watched Nightbreed back in ’93 and the same year that I bought the making of the film book. And ever since then I’ve looked at the pictures in the book and having read the script, I know there’s footage out there that had all this different alternative story.  I was like ‘when will this come out?’ Will this ever come out as a bonus feature on a DVD or something? It’s like I’d completely lost hope until 2009 and then it’s finally it’s like the tape came up. Yay! And then 2009 rolls by, then 2010, then 2011. I’m like well it seems like the footage is out but nothing’s going to happen to it and finally this happens. I’m really happy now.

DAVIS: I never even considered that it would be released with all the deleted material put back in.

NORTH: When we stood outside the cinema in Leicester Square in London and we were like we’re going to watch Nightbreed: The Cabal Cut that was really bizarre.

DAVIS: Yeah.

NORTH: Hellraiser Podcast Interviewer: We were like this is on in a huge cinema here in London.

DANHAUSER: Did you see the picture of the line? I mean you were there, but geez.

NORTH: Yeah, we were there.

DAVIS: And we had our tickets already. (I can’t understand what he’s saying here at 25:30-25:40.)

DANHAUSER: Oh, so that was just a line to buy tickets?

DAVIS: I think so or to collect your tickets you had already ordered. Or just to be excited.

LEITAO: I wanted to go to the Leicester Square screening so much at the Empire cinema but the Olympics were going on I think. Well, they finished shortly before the movie.

DAVIS: Yeah, they’d just finished.

LEITAO: And it was horribly expensive to fly to London at that time and stay at a hotel. It was just crazy.

NORTH: Sorry about that.

LEITAO: I would have to spend thousands of euros just to go there and watch the movie. So, I was like well it looks like I might have to go to the Manchester one. But, of course, now the Manchester one seems unlikely too, but who knows. Maybe I can catch another one soon.

DAVIS: Yeah.

NORTH: Well, you know that’s the thing you’re trying to see something for the second time whereas Crystal’s got this amazing Hellraiser stuff to experience for the first time. I can’t believe it! I’m so excited that she gets to experience for the first time. I love it! I try to get everybody that I know to watch Hellraiser for the first time and I’ve had many different reactions, but I love you know introducing people to Clive Barker’s work for the first time because they always have a really visceral reaction. They love it or they hate it. You know it’s always something really big. And that’s what is so great about his stuff.

DANHAUSER: That kind of reminds me Crystal. Since you were new to Nightbreed and you haven’t been watching Nightbreed for twenty-some years like the rest of us. Which voice do you like better for Rachael?

RAEN: I do not like the dubbed voice.

DANHAUSER: Okay, because I’m thinking that a lot of the negative reaction to that is because people are so used to seeing the other version.

DAVIS: Why has there been a negative reaction to the new one?

DANHAUSER: Yeah, there’s been a negative reaction to original actress Catherine Chevalier’s real voice.

DAVIS: Oh really? I liked it.

DANHAUSER: Yeah, they feel like it sounded to teenager-ish maybe.

DAVIS: I liked it.

NORTH: I thought it was good because I thought you could have the actual actor’s performance.

RAEN: Yeah, that’s why I liked it better.

DANHAUSER: And we had one guy that posted in the group that said he liked Doug Bradley’s voice with the German accent better. He didn’t like Doug’s natural voice. And we had to tell him, “No, no, no” that wasn’t Doug Bradley and he said, “Yes it was.”  And we said “No it wasn’t!”

RAEN: Yeah, I remember that conversation.

LEITAO: Yeah, we had quite a hard time convincing him that it wasn’t Doug Badley’s voice. He thought they were trying to replace his performance which he thought was so good. No, it was not Doug Bradley voice. He was like, “Well, who said so?” Well, Clive Barker and Doug Bradley say so.

DANHAUSER: And he said, “Well, where’s the German guy in the credits?” Well, I guess you got us there. I mean he’s not in the credits, but, yeah he eventually did came to believe us.

NORTH: He eventually realized he was an idiot.

(laughter)

DANHAUSER: Jose, you found an article that said that didn’t you?

LEITAO: Yeah, I found an article where Clive Barker and Doug Bradley both said that Doug’s performance was dubbed over by a German actor that lived in the United States. So, that was what finally took to convince him.

NORTH: If you see the video that’s on Youtube where you see Doug Bradley recording his dialog for the Nightbreed: Cabal Cut that would be enough evidence.

DANHAUSER: But this guy believed that this video was just redoing Doug’s performance.

NORTH: So he thought that Doug Bradley was going, “Oh, my original performance was rubbish where I was pretending to be a German so I’m now going to re-record it.”

DANHAUSER: Yeah. (laughs)

LEITAO: I just discovered I have some notes here how Occupy Midian evolved since it was created. Because it was created on the twenty-sixth of March. And the good thing is I also have the petition and it’s amazing because it was created on March 30^th. In four days it had gotten 200 signatures and in another month it has reached another 800 signatures. Finally, on the eighth of April it had reached 1,200 signatures. Which is pretty amazing since it was created on March 30^th. It was just crazy, the fans just picked up on this petition and ran wild with it because at the time we started getting attention from websites like “ShockTill You Drop” and “Fangoria”. And, of course, “Revelations” and that was amazing. And Crystal was one of the first people to start gathering all of this online coverage on this website called Scoop It. So I’m going to let you pick up on this Crystal.

RAEN: It’s scoop.it/bring-back-nightbreed. We’re up to fourteen pages worth of articles and blogs and tweets. I think there’s about ten per page. We’ve got tons of information. I tried to read every single post and article to make sure I’m not posting something terrible.

(laughter) But sometimes I have thirty different articles lined up that mention Nightbreed: The Cabal Cut so I’ve been skimming them. There’s a lot of good ones on there.

DANHAUSER: Every once in a while there’s a blog that has a negative review.

RAEN: Yeah.

LEITAO: Or a less than positive one. Yeah, so that was amazing. Of course then Simon Bamford and Nicolas Vince were added the say day it was created. Then Anne Bobby joined the next day after we created this. And I have all of this stuff on notes here. The first Twitter account was created on March 30^th as well. And Russell and Mark became admins on April 1^st.

DANHAUSER: And at the same time they were developing the OccupyMidian.com website for a long time. Christain Francis is the person who designed that website. He’s also the one that’s recently put up the store and the t-shirts to sell.

LEITAO: Yeah, it’s just been growing and growing. It’s amazing. The whole thing we couldn’t have done this without the fans is really true. When we were gathering petition signatures we were trying to reach—help me out here Ryan—we were trying to reach six thousand before June 1^st.

DANHAUSER: Five thousand.

RAEN: Five thousand.

LEITAO: Five thousand. And there were people, like all of us, devoted too pushing this movement on Twitter. ‘Please go to this petition,’ Even Clive Barker retweeted us a few times. There were three people who really went the extra mile for it. One was Colin Lacativa. The others were Christine and Abigail. These were people who were maxing out their Twitter accounts. Tweeting almost a thousand times a day. I didn’t know you had to cool off your twitter after so many tweets.

NORTH: Yeah, they’ll ban your account.

LEITAO: So they were maxing it out. So that was wonderful.

RAEN: Didn’t Christine even get Neil Gaiman to re-tweet it?

DANHAUSER: Yes.

LEITAO: Yes, she did. We also got people like Steve Niles. Even the guy from Myth Busters, Adam Savage retweeted it.

RAEN: Yes!

LEITAO: Yeah, that was just amazing. We had a lot of people retweet that stuff.

DANHAUSER: It was also cool to find out who’s a Nightbreed fan. It has also been cool to meet the stars of the movie. It’s weird we’ve had so many more interactions with a lot of them.  And Anne Bobby has been the one most directly involved. She’s the one that came up with the idea of making Occupy Midian signs. It’s where we take a picture of ourselves with a sign saying why we like Nightbreed and why we should Occupy Midian.

LEITAO: Yeah, that was a great idea. I think I actually did the first sign myself. And then you did one and Roger (Boyes) did another one. We still have people making up signs saying, “I love Nightbreed. I want to see it released on blu ray. Occupy Midian.”

DANHAUSER: Yeah, when we were interviewing her, she said that we should do that. That’s where it came from.

NORTH: There’s definitely a market out there for it. I first learned about it through a Hellraiser fan forum. The Hellraiser community has been talking about it for ages as well.

DANHAUSER: Yeah, it’s you know compared to Hellraiser, Nightbreed really got shafted.

NORTH: Yeah. Yeah.

DANHAUSER: It’s also too bad that Clive sold the rights to Hellraiser.

NORTH: Exactly.

DANHAUSER: …Because he lost control of it so quickly. But you know if it were a matter of trying to get an extended version of Hellraiser or a high-definition release of that there would be no debate.

DAVIS: Yeah, the thing is though that Hellraiser as it stands is obviously a masterpiece of filmmaking whereas Nightbreed the original cut you’re like, “Oh it’s really good. I love it, but there was something missing.” When I saw the Cabal Cut I was like this is the version that I want to see.

NORTH: That’s the film!

LEITAO: I can see that. We have to take an account also that Hellraiser is a much more simple story than Nightbreed. It’s a simple Faustian tale where you have a very limited amount of characters. It works very well. It’s a beautifully crafted little story like you said.

DANHAUSER: Really limited sets, also.

LEITAO: Yeah. For Nightbreed I think the problem is like Russell Cherrington keeps saying it was supposed to be Gone With the Wind with monsters.

NORTH: Yeah.

DAVIS: Yeah.

LEITAO: It was just too big and the producers didn’t really get it. I think there’s this anecdotal story about Clive Barker being in a production meeting once and one of the producers asked him, “You know I was reading this and you have to be careful because otherwise people might sympathize with the monsters.”

NORTH: Absolutely yeah. And that’s the problem that they had.

DAVIS: When people watch Nightbreed for years and years it was always, “Oh, this is that great film Clive Barker made that the studio messed around with.”

DANHAUSER: Yeah.

DAVIS: And people knew about that already.

DANHAUSER: Yeah and it’s funny because he had bad experiences with studios before and that’s why he decided to start to direct himself.

LEITAO: Oh yeah.

DANHAUSER: And then after what happened on Nightbreed he said, “I’m not only am I going to direct, but I’m going to executive produce for a Lord of illusions” because he couldn’t trust producers anymore either.

LEITAO: And he wanted his own director’s cut on laserdisc on the contract. So, that’s what he got.

NORTH: Yeah.

LEITAO: I just hope they can find all this this footage because that’s going to be a key element in making sure that we get the final definitive version of The Cabal Cut on bluray.

DAVIS: Yes, absolutely.

NORTH: Everybody’s working really hard to make people who don’t understand realize that we all love it. We all want it. And everyone’s pushing hard to make everybody go, “Yes! Let’s get this amazing DVD/Bluray out there.” And we’ll buy it.

DANHAUSER: Yeah. We’ve been debating about localization and I’m kind of thinking they should make it region free and just load it up with all different subtitles.

NORTH: That would be great!

RAEN: Yeah!

LEITAO: Yeah, a lot of blu rays are still region free, right?

DANHAUSER: Yeah.

LEITAO: That’d be wonderful. That would simplify things.

DANHAUSER: And the distinction between PAL and NTSC isn’t really the same as it was back in the nineties, right?

DAVIS: No.

NORTH: No.

LEITAO: I’ve had a multi-region video player since the eighties. So, that’s not a problem for the blu ray.

DANHAUSER: Yeah.

LEITAO: So, here’s the thing. I am not favorable to any kind of remakes of Hellraiser or Nightbreed. I just wanted to throw this out there because some people are talking about remaking Hellraiser and while others are talking about how cool it would be if they remade Nightbreed instead of the Occupy Midian thing. And I’m like no.

RAEN: No.

LEITAO: Not at all. Absolutely not.

DANHAUSER: In other discussion groups to fans are asking who do you think would be a good director for a Nightbreed remake? And they’re like, “Oh, Del Toro!” And I kind of stay away from that because I think it steals the focus away from what can really happen. I mean remake—who remembers the remake of Nightmare on Elm Street, right? That was sort of controversial at the time when it came out, but I can barely remember anything that happened in that movie now.

DAVIS: Yeah.

LEITAO: Or the Friday the 13th remake.

DAVIS: Yeah, awful. Most of the remakes have been rubbish.

NORTH: I personally don’t want a Hellraiser remake. I don’t want it. It’s not going to work. But then someone put in a forum and said, “Look if they do remake it, they can’t fuck up any more than they already have done.” I was like, “Yeah, actually I guess so.” I was like just loosen the clause and if they’re going to remake it, fine. Whatever. But I’m not really going to be up for it.

DANHAUSER: That’s an interesting point because a lot of the Hellraiser sequels in a way are remakes because they have nothing to do with the other movies.

DAVIS: Yeah.

LEITAO: Especially from Hellraiser: Inferno onward. They made like a clean slate of the Hellraiser franchise.

NORTH: I do holdout some kind of hope that maybe if they were to do a remake—it’s out of my hands they’re going to do it anyway—it might be good.

LEITAO: It might be good, but it would have to be something—

NORTH: You never know, but I don’t hold out much hope.

LEITAO: Here’s my take on this. I think that some people say, “Okay remakes have a good side to them which is they draw attention to the original movie.”

NORTH: Yeah.

LEITAO: But the way I see it, for example, Hellraiser was turned into a franchise and it was drained until it was bone dry. With Hellraiser: Revelations I think that’s actually the bottom of the barrel.

NORTH: Yeah!

LEITAO: If they do remake the original movie, for one they’re going to have to have to change it just enough so that it becomes fresh and new.

DANHAUSER: And they can never go back, right?

LEITAO: I think it’s not going to be what we’re used to, but I think for a new generation that can introduce them to the original series. But that said, even if the remake is good then it would be the first step in another process which will lead to another sequel and another sequel and then they’ll get progressively worse again.

DAVIS: Yeah.

NORTH: Yeah, as with all films. I would say if they can, if by some amazing magic some crazy director makes a remake of Hellraiser and it’s good. And because of that some kid now watches the original Hellraiser, I will go yes, job done!

LEITAO: Yeah, yeah.

NORTH: That’s what I want.

DANHAUSER: But do you think that that happens? Do you think that teenagers go watch The Hills Have Eyes or Texas Chainsaw Massacre remakes and I’m going to go back and see the originals now.

NORTH: I think so.

DANHAUSER: Or do you think just see that and say that was okay and they’ll go off and do something else.

NORTH: If you get buzzed off a film. If you enjoy a film these days with the internet, you go “Wait a minute, Texas Chainsaw Massacre that was a cool film.” And then you’re like, “Oh, there was another one!” You might watch it with your friends and think I don’t know, but you’ve got access to it now.

LEITAO: Yeah, I think that happened to us too.

RAEN: It also depends on the kid.

NORTH: Yeah.

DAVIS: Yeah, hopefully not the stupid kids.

(laughter)

LEITAO: Yeah, for example, I saw the original movie The Fly with Vincent Price because I saw Cronenberg’s remake of The Fly.

DAVIS: Me too!

NORTH: Yeah!

DANHAUSER: I saw the black and white Night of the Living Dead because I saw Tom Savini’s  1990 remake of that.

LEITAO: There you go.

DAVIS: Exactly! Me too. There you go. We proved it!

DANHAUSER: We proved that remakes are only good in the 80’s and the 90’s.

(laughter)

DAVIS: Well, maybe.

NORTH: We proved if someone tomorrow makes a brilliant Hellraiser remake that everyone enjoys in the modern world that someone somewhere will go on the internet and go, “Wait a minute what’s this other Hellraiser?” And they will watch it.

DANHAUSER: Yeah.

NORTH: And one small child will enjoy it.

DAVIS: Small children shouldn’t be watching Hellraiser.

(laughter)

NORTH: I watched the original as a small child and look how I am!

(laughter)

DANHAUSER: A Hellraiser remake is going to be totally Americanized, right? It won’t be the same thing.

NORTH: Yeah.

DAVIS: Yeah. It’ll be full of pretty young teenagers who are played by thirty year old’s getting picked off one by one.

DANHAUSER: Yeah.

LEITAO: Yeah, about little kids watching Hellraiser, I have to share this story because it’s really cute. I have a nephew and when he was a four old four years old. And I have a lot of Hellraiser memorabilia. I have some props. I actually have Lylesburg’s medallion from Nightbreed. I actually own the original prop. I also have a bust of Nix from made by Steve Johnson from Lord of illusions.

DAVIS: Wow!

LEITAO. It’s got the head and the shoulders and then it has a little white hood draped over it. It has a little wooden base.  Also, my brother owns the bust of Pinhead made by Bob Keen that I think there is just a handful of those in the world. One of them is on Planet Hollywood. You can find that if you look up on Cenobite.com in the collectibles section. There’s one of those busts there. And the thing that my nephew used to love to do was looking and touching the Pinhead bust because it had pins on it. I would pick him up and hold him next to it say, “Hey, look he’s got pins in his head!” And he’d laugh and laugh his head off. He wasn’t afraid of it at all.

(laughter)

LEITAO: I hope I didn’t scar my nephew for life.

NORTH: By corrupting young people.

DAVIS: We forget of course Hellraiser was released as an R-rated film and kids could go see it the cinema.

DANHAUSER: As long as they’ve got their parents with them.

DAVIS: It could be a very irresponsible parent or an older brother. But over here you could not see it unless you were over eighteen. But that’s how the whole R-rating system is. Kids can see the most horrific things if they’ve got an irresponsible an adult with them.

LEITAO: Absolutely.

NORTH: Yay!

(laughter)

LEITAO: Here, nowadays, the rating system doesn’t really work anymore does it? I mean at least in my country, I’m pretty sure that with the multiplexes you can just buy a ticket for Pixar’s latest movie and go in there and do the old switcheroo. Go into like The Hostel III or something like. There’s really nobody paying attention.

DANHAUSER: It’s the same thing in the US. They don’t guide you to your seat once you buy your tickets.

NORTH: No, no. You might have to stand out in the corridor for a while eating popcorn, but you’ll get there.

DANHAUSER: Yeah, you can watch two or three movies if you want too.

LEITAO: I’m really looking forward to seeing The Cabal Cut. And I feel like I’ve seen it already because I’ve heard so much from everybody involved in this and everybody discusses the movie with me. I haven’t seen the movie, I’ve read the script so many times, I feel like I’ve seen the movie in my head.

DANHAUSER: Yeah.

NORTH: I would say it’s a very emotional experience when I watched I wasn’t prepared at how good it would be. I thought this will be a great addition to Nightbreed. I thought okay this will be something quite good, but actually I really got caught up in it again.

DANHAUSER: Yeah.

NORTH: It really moved me. It was really good. It was a really great film and it was something I didn’t expect to be that good.

LEITAO: I heard Simon Bamford got all teary-eyed when he was watching the movie.

NORTH: Yeah, we spoke to him afterwards and he said he had a little cry.

RAEN: Aww.

DAVIS: Best of luck to see it in the near future.

NORTH: Yeah.

LEITAO: Absolutely. Really looking forward to this. And it was great being involved with Occupy Midian. It was great that we got this thing helped this thing get started and that we gave it a little push along the way to promote this.

NORTH: It’s gone really well.

LEITAO: There’s been so many people helping out. Everybody that’s a member of Occupy Midian. It’s an amazing how all of these fans share a common passion to help fulfill Clive Barker’s original vision that he had twenty-two years ago. I’m really hoping to hold this in my hand one day as a blu ray and say, “We helped make this thing happen.” And now I can sit down in a chair and fall asleep in the middle of it. No, I’m just kidding.

(laughter)

DAVIS: Awesome. I’m sure you’ll get there. Well done to everybody involved in Occupy Midian. It’s really great.

NORTH: Yeah, it’s good.

DAVIS: And thanks for talking to us today as well.

DANHAUSER: Yeah, it has been great.

LEITAO: Yeah, I’m really looking forward to your episode at the Hellraiser House with Nicolas Vince.

NORTH: Yeah, yeah.

DAVIS: So are we. We haven’t done it yet.

DANHAUSER: Do you guys have any more radio productions or audio productions planned?

DAVIS: That’s a question we get quite a lot.

NORTH: The quick answer is yes of course. The long answer is not for a while because it needs to be of a certain quality. And the one we did took us quite a long time to get it right. When we get the script right for the next one and I’m sure you’ve heard this in the movie-world that it’s all about the script. And once that’s right, then we’ll look at producing it properly. So, definitely yes at some point, but I can’t give any sort of timeframe just yet because we both work full time as well. So, it’s hard to get the time to actually do this thing properly.

DANHAUSER: Who’s your main actor for your last one?

NORTH: It’s a guy called Simon Caine. He does a lot of comedy, but he’s a fantastic actor.

DAVIS: He’s a very lovely man.

NORTH: Everyone was very scared by him.

DANHAUSER: Yeah.

LEITAO: Your production Piercing the Veil was the best Hellraiser sequel I’ve seen or heard in comparison to like half of the Hellraiser sequels that we got.

DAVIS: That’s very nice of you.

NORTH: That’s lovely. Thank you.

DANHAUSER: When I was listening to it in my car I was actually finding myself getting scared and going, “Wow this is really good!” Like the part when he was going to kill that girl for the first time I was thinking, “Man, I don’t want to hear this!” This is scary.

(laughter)

DAVIS: We have people telling us that they listen to it late at night with all the lights off. And listen to it on with headphones and then they did get quite scared. And that was the plan, it was supposed to be a horror play. So good. We’re glad they enjoyed it.

DANHAUSER: Yeah, good job.

LEITAO: I was listening to it on my iPod and I was like, “Well let’s see what this is about?” I got it started and I hear the Cenobite torturing the poor tortured soul. I’m thinking don’t worry you won’t choke to death. And I was like, “Oh this is going to be good.” The hairs on my arms were getting all bumpy! This is good. This is good.

(laughter)

DANHAUSER: Hair-raiser.

DAVIS: Yeah, Hair-raiser!

NORTH: Well, thanks guys that means a lot. We’re going to keep doing them.

DAVIS: Yeah, definitely.

LEITAO: Please do.

DANHAUSER: Yeah, we look forward to it.

NORTH: Awesome! Alright.

DAVIS: Cool! Thanks very much.

LEITAO: Thanks Peter and Phil. It’s been a pleasure.

DANHAUSER: Thank you.

NORTH: No worries.

RAEN: Yes, it has been very nice speaking with you.

DAVIS: You too. Thanks so much.

NORTH: Nice to talk with you. And good luck with the podcast.

DANHAUSER: Thank you.