I had the honor of interviewing Nathan Ludwig and Chad Farmer about their amazing release, MIDNIGHT MANIACS VOL.1, releasing today!
Let’s jump in!
Christina Pfeiffer: First thing’s first, I’m dying to know how your collaborative relationship started.
Nathan Ludwig: We met in film school in Florida in 2008. I heard this guy with a thick Georgia accent talking about other kinds of films that weren't mainstream pablum available at the multiplex every Friday night. Indie horror, transgressive underground stuff, Asian gangster cinema, martial arts classics - this dude knew his stuff and I had to get to know him. We started writing screenplays together and that led to making a feature film in Oregon that was a true disaster. After that, we rebounded by making short films for a while before starting an indie genre film fest called GenreBlast that is well respected in the film community. That led us to writing books shortly after that once I realized there was a market for it. Chad loves trash, extreme horror, and splatterpunk stuff while I'm more of a pulpy guy with a love for snappy dialogue and darkly absurdist situations. Together we will make an awesome book one of these days.
Chad Farmer: It began in film school. If I remember correctly, one of our teachers asked us what kind of movies I liked, or maybe it was Nathan sitting behind me watching as I rated movies on Netflix in class. Either/or, we concluded that we had something in common. Our taste for movies. Me being an introvert to the most extreme, he approached me, and we began talking. Next thing I knew we were going to see Midnight Meat Train, and I was giving him rides to school because he was without a car at the time. And here we are 16 years later, making films, running a film festival, and writing together!
CP: You are not only novelists but work in film! Which entertainment medium is more difficult?
NL: Books are more difficult from a marketing and promotion perspective. The doing is very gratifying, to be honest. When it comes to film, making the thing is a hell on earth usually. You will go broke, and everyone will hate you. It is not recommended at all. Stay writing books and don't get involved in film. But if you can screen your film at a fest and get distribution after all of that, it's the end all be all of awesome. You'll still be poor, though. Just FYI.
CF: Writing novels is easier by far. A film always begins with a screenplay. Writing one pigeon holds you into format that comes with restrictions and rules to follow. After that it's
pre-production, storyboarding, location scouting, etc. Me, I've always had an unlimited imagination. Writing a novel allows you to explore and translate your inner thoughts on to
page with no limits, except for spelling, indenting paragraphs, and coherent sentences...I'm still struggling with coherent sentences...
CP: Let’s get difficult. How would you pitch the other’s story in MIDNIGHT MANIACS Vol. 1 (releasing October 18th)?
NL: Grindhouse vampires terrorize a tough-as-nails single mother while a blood bank cabal rules over the city. A heartwarming story the whole family can enjoy.
CF: Not to sound repetitive, but the only quote that would be appropriate would be, No one can hear you scream, clean, or know you’re psychotic in space! To be original I would say,
it's a well thought out study in the paranormal, a cringe inducing, and an impending doom that surrounds the entirety of the story of robots, and how evil can infect and destroy all that is good.
CP: You are on a deserted island and only have enough battery on your cell phone to watch one more movie before it runs out. You will never watch another one… ever. What is your last movie viewing?
NL: Either The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly or... no, it's that one. It's brought me to tears on more than one occasion. Either that or The Goonies (my 80s childhood in a nutshell) so whichever one happens to be on my phone at the time of this hypothetical marooning.
CF: Scarface! Why? The dialogue, the violence, the amount of cocaine sniffed, and to top it off, Tony Montana's creed "I never f@#&ed anybody over in my life, that didn't have it
coming to them. You got that? All I have in this world is my balls and my word. I don't break them for no one." Nothing ever is truer, and that's how I try to live my life. Minus the killing, snorting cocaine, and killing.
CP: OK, now I will go easy on you. Who are your inspirations?
NL: Books - Chuck Palahniuk, Edgar Allan Poe, Stephen King, H.P. Lovecraft. Robert E. Howard. The usual. I also dig Shirley Jackson, Clive Barker, Richard Matheson, Ursula K. Le Guin, and J.R.R. Tolkien.
Movies - John Carpenter, Takashi Miike, Kiyoshi Kurosawa, Sion Sono, Kathryn Bigelow, Quentin Tarantino, and more recently, Julia Ducornau, Ari Aster, and Jordan Peele.
CF: To be honest with you, I didn't even know what the term "splatterpunk" or "extreme horror" in writing meant until I
watched the movie Header, which was inspired by the novel of the same title by Ed Lee. My movie influences would be anything by John Carpenter, Abel Ferrara, and Stuart Gordon, three of my favorite directors.
CP: Who is your dream actor to work with?
NL: Michael Shannon, Brad Dourif, Ann Dowd.
CF: Michael Shannon! He commands every scene that he acts in, Take Shelter, The Shape of Water, Nocturnal Animals, and Bug.
CP: What indie author(s) do you feel needs more attention? Bonus points: What is your favorite book they wrote?
NL: Chad Farmer - Devil Won't Let Me Be, Kenzie Jennings - The Poisoner's Last Ride, Samantha Kolesnik - True Crime, Chris DiLeo - The Hands of Onan, R.J. Benetti - The Slappening.
CF: Terry Miller's Den of The Wererats, it's sleazy, violent, horrifying, and it's mostly about rats! R.J Benetti's The Slappening, the characters are superbly written (whether you hate or like them), they tend to be absurd in a bizarro way, the dark comedy attached to the stories is original!
CP: What has been one of your proudest moments as a creative?
NL: Winning my first award for screenwriting and then getting my first short story published. They both made me feel like I wasn't wasting my time and gave me sense of validation that can be life-saving in certain instances.
CF: Devil Won't Let Me Be reviews. It was the first book I published. The reviews you and Donna Latham gave were amazing. You saying I had to walk away from it a couple of times was the biggest compliment I could receive for this book. Also, Donna Latham's review I lost count of how many times I said what the fuck! Also, the reviews from Peter Topside, Nathan Ludwig, Paul Grammatica, and so many more five stars from other readers. Hell, I didn't even know
what the terms Splatterpunk and Extreme Horror meant before writing this book.
CP: Who would you have play the other in a Lifetime movie?
NL: Michael Shannon
CF: A young Brendan Gleeson, since Nathan is Irish and so is Brendan. Brendan always plays a no-nonsense character in his movies. Nathan is much the same, he will always tell you the truth. It may not be what you want to hear, but that’s why we have been friends for now going on 16 years.
CP: Are there more books in the works that I should be stalking for… I mean, on the lookout for?
NL: Well, we have another collaboration called After Dark in Crazy Town, which is a short collection of screenplay-inspired stories we've worked on together through the years. I'm currently shopping around my next two books to publishers - The Resurrection Girl and Method Hack. Chad has a doozy of a book coming at the end of the year called Death Crazed through his imprint Deadneck Press. I'm also working on a series of novelizations for Encyclopocalypse (one co-authored with Chad) and Chad is currently writing a very personal book called Ghorehouse. One day Chadwick and I will finally write Love Post-Mortem together, a novel that will absolutely be a Mount Everest of emotionally charged pulp splatter insanity.
CF: Yes! Death Crazed. it's about a big, surly, no BS cop with a heart of gold and a German Shepherd with the same personality traits who fall in love with a kind-hearted psychologist. However shit hits the fan when a narcissistic ego murdering maniac turns him, his dog, and his new loves life upside down. When the two collide nothing good happens! Also, GhoreHouse. It's inspired by a true story of my dearly departed brother and my uncle's exploits when my brother was a teenager. They end up in a whorehouse where the prostitutes turn out to be ghouls! It's a cross between Porky's Revenge and From Dusk Til Dawn.
Make sure to check out this and all of their works ASAP!
Get it here:
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0DHJD6494?
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