Our first post back from hiatus had to be a good one. While we searched high and low for unique interviews we could do, there was only one name that caught our attention. This interview was conducted last September at Mad Monster Expo with the legendary John Russo. He is a milestone in the horror genre with his contribution to works like Return of the Living Dead, one of my personal favorite films. It was insanely cool to do this interview and I hope you muti-freaks enjoy!
You are a pretty big name in the horror industry, would you call yourself a fan of the genre?
I don’t know if you’d call me a fan or not. George Romero once asked a similar question, he said “When you say you want to make movies you don’t say you want to be a ‘horror film maker’ you just say you want to be a filmmaker.” We always thought we could make any type of movie. We had a lot of experience and had a lot of bright and young talented people. I don’t do just horror, I do all kinds of movies. There are horror films that I really like. I like Alien, Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and so on but really I don’t watch a lot of horror films. One of my favorites is an HBO series called Rome, which is absolutely brilliant. I also don’t collect movies, I have so much of my own stuff I have to worry about. I watched all 35 hours of Rome, and I bought those seasons. I love the Godfather, Pulp Fiction, Reservoir Dogs, all the Scorsese stuff like Goodfellas, Casino. Anytime those are on TV I’ll watch a part of them.
You have chilled people to the bone with your tales of horror, what advice can you give aspiring writers?
Well, the trouble with that kind of advice is it takes a long time to answer it and you can’t answer it in a few sentences. I did a talk yesterday and it was an hour and that’s all that it was about. My writing methods. How to structure plot, characters, and how they work together. How to make it easier on yourself as a writer. What you could do is recently we made an audio book that’s on Burning Bulb Publishing which is Gary Vincent’s company. We are friends and colleagues and we did this audio book on how to write low budget horror. The lessons that I teach apply to every kind of writing and every kind of movie and every kind of book. Just get that and you can listen to it while you drive. It’s an hour and it’s in essence the same stuff I talked about in my Q and A yesterday. .
Who was your inspiration when you were getting started?
Well, I didn’t strictly speaking have an inspiration for getting into the movie business because I thought movies were only made in Hollywood. I used to see every movie that came to town in the small town I grew up in. There were three movie theaters and the movies changed twice a week and there were often double features. I saw just about everything. When George Romero came to Pittsburgh when I was 18 years old my friend and I, both of us wanting to be writers, enrolled in Carnage Tech and was a fine arts major. George Romero came to Pittsburgh from New York as a Fine Arts major. Romero and Richie, my friend, were standing together in line wearing their freshman beanies. Richie became friends with George and came back to me saying, “I met this great guy, you just have to meet him. When you come home from Christmas Vacation you gotta meet George.” I did. George was the one that his father was an artist for the National Screen Company. They produced posters, standees, and every kind of movie display. So George grew up around movies and started making eight millimeter movies when he was 15. So he came into Pittsburgh and he was the one who was nuts about making movies and showed us that we could probably make movies in Pittsburgh, they weren’t all necessarily made in Hollywood. That’s what kicked off the whole thing. So, in a way you could say George Romero was my inspiration.
What is just one parting piece of inspiration you could give to people trying to make it in the industry?
I think the motivation has to come from within. However, I will say, everything that you read or watch that is good you fall in love with. That is inspiration. That’s what shows you that it can be done and maybe guides you to the point where you can do it if you learn enough and stick with it. Really you have to learn the craft of writing or filmmaking to get it, no matter what it takes. It’s not all that easy. It’s easier now than it was because just money wise you can have a digital camera and a computer you could be in business overnight. When we did it you had to have a hundred to a hundred and fifty thousand dollars to do anything at all. It took us years to build up enough equipment to make a movie.
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