117 episodes

Exploring the techniques, strategies, and key pieces of advice for aspiring horror directors, straight from the minds of some of the greatest filmmakers and creators in horror. Host Nick Taylor engages in one-on-one conversations with directors, producers, writers, actors and artists to uncover the keys to their creative and professional success in the horror business.

The Nick Taylor Horror Show American Nightmare Studios

    • TV & Film
    • 5.0 • 17 Ratings

Exploring the techniques, strategies, and key pieces of advice for aspiring horror directors, straight from the minds of some of the greatest filmmakers and creators in horror. Host Nick Taylor engages in one-on-one conversations with directors, producers, writers, actors and artists to uncover the keys to their creative and professional success in the horror business.

    Introducing The Howl, a New Monthly Horror Series

    Introducing The Howl, a New Monthly Horror Series

    Hey everyone, trying something a little different out here. After 100 episodes where I've mostly focused on the guests, I'm introducing The Howl, a new recurring segment named after my newsletter of the same name. Once a month, I'll be joining forces with my friend Adam Cruz and we're going to summarize and discuss the past month's horror news, share what we've watched recently, and just generally nerd out over all things horror.
    You might know Adam best from his Instagram account @MurderMemes_ which I will link in the show notes. Adam is also the creator of Blood and Banter, a horror-centric conversational card game which is a ton of fun, which we've talked about on the show.
    So, The Howl is all about catching you up on what's happening in horror, delivering some solid movie recommendations, and hopefully entertaining you all the while. Note that this is a new segment and we're likely going to change things and refine the format as we go along and would love to hear from you on what you liked, didn't like, want more of etc. 
    So without further ado, here is me, Nick Taylor in conversation with Adam Cruz on a new monthly segment we're calling The Howl. 
    SHOW NOTES
    Follow Adam Cruz at: 
    Instagram https://www.instagram.com/murdermemes_/
    TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@murdermemes_
    Store: www.murdermemes.shop

    MOVIES:
    Evil Dead 2​​The Beyond​​The Exorcist​​Candyman​​HellraiserTexas Chainsaw Massacre​​Nightmare on Elm Street​​Scream​​Hereditary​​Martyrs​​Beetlejuice​​The Conjuring (series)​​The Killing of a Sacred Deer​​Howling 3: The Marsupials​​

    • 1 hr 32 min
    Producer, Andrew Corkin

    Producer, Andrew Corkin

    Today we're talking to Andrew Corkin. Andrew is a producer who's body of work includes Martha Marcy May Marlene, the American remake of We Are What We Are, The Beach House (now streaming on Shudder) Alone With You, the feature debut of Emily Bennett and Justin Brooks, the Netfliux docuseries, Pepsi Where’s my Jet, and many more titles. 
    In addition to producing, Andrew is also a teacher who has taught at Emerson and The American Film Institute and goes out of his way to teach career lessons that are not typically taught in film school as evidenced by this conversation.
    Andrew delivers some of the most honest and thorough insights into what it means to be a producer that I think I've ever heard on this show. This is years worth of film school in a single hours so get ready to take notes. 
    In this conversation Andrew and I discuss the keys to sustaining a long and successful career in film, the importance of mentorship and his experience within the horror genre. 
    Here are some key takeaways from this conversation with Andrew Corkin.
    Heed the 80/20 Principle: Andrew pays a lot of mind to which directors he decides to work with, noting that it's a 3-5 year partnership and therefore a serious commitment. The balance he seeks in a director he’s working with is someone with a strong vision but open to feedback. The ideal director has 80% of their vision realized and thought out, but remains open to 20% influence from collaborators. A director with too strong a vision is as difficult to work with as one whose vision isn't fleshed out enough. It's crucial to demonstrate a thorough vision while maintaining some fluidity to enable powerful collaborations.
    Show Don't Tell: When pitching Martha Marcy May Marlene with Director Sean Durkin, raising money was a challenge since at the time, Sean was a first time feature director. Andrew and Sean responded by creating a short proof of concept, showcasing the vision, tone, and nuance of the film they wanted to make. This approach was successful, helping them raise the funds not just by communicating the vision, but by demonstrating Sean’s ability to deliver it as a director. A verbally articulated vision can only take you so far; producers need to see what you're capable of actually making if they’re going to invest in you.
    Lean into mentorship. A common theme throughout Andrew’s career has been mentorship and education. He not only seeks to learn from collaborators but will even choose specific collaborators to learn from. This learner's mindset can be rare in the film business which is rife with egos, but Andrew credits this mentality of continuous learning to his success and career sustainability and even after over a decade in the industry, he still constantly strives to learn more.
    SHOW NOTES
    Movies Mentioned: 
    The Kid Stays in the Picture (Documentary about Robert Evans)Afterschool - Antonio CamposSimon Killer - Antonio CamposMartha Marcy May Marlene - Sean DurkinWe Are What We Are (Mexican Original) - Jorge Michel GrauWe Are What We Are (American Remake) - Jim MickleLet the Right One In (Swedish Original) - Tomas AlfredsonThe Babadook - Jennifer KentVigilante - Sarah Dagger-NixonClean Shaven - Lodge KerriganLe Samourai - Jean-Pierre Melville
    Follow Andrew Corkin at:
    Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/andrewdcorkin/X:  https://twitter.com/andrewdcorkin?lang=enIMDB: a href="https://www.imdb.com/name/nm2371958/" rel="noopener noreferrer"...

    • 40 min
    Onyx The Fortuitous Director, Andrew Bowser

    Onyx The Fortuitous Director, Andrew Bowser

    Today we have the Director of Onyx the Fortuitous, Andrew Bowser. Onyx the Fortuitous is a blast of a movie, now streaming on Screambox and one of the things I liked most about it is 1, it had really awesome practical creature effects from Adam KreatureKid Doughterty, but two, it was such a unique vision of a movie that was cast straight from Andrew's skull. The vision behind this movie was super unique, super fun, hilarious, and the movie ultimately made it all the way to the Sundance Film Festival.
    In this interview with Andrew, we get into the highly personal origins of the character of Onyx, how he was able to bring the character from being a YouTube sensation to a full feature, and plenty of geeking out on 90's nostalgia and practical effects.
    Here are some key takeaways from this conversation with Andrew.
    Expect to adapt. During filming, Andrew faced significant production constraints, including the loss of a crucial filming location – a cemetery. Every production needs a plan B, C, and sometimes even D. Andrew's experience is a textbook example. Losing a cemetery location could've been a disaster, but instead, it turned into a creative opportunity. Andrew's producer figured the art department could create a graveyard in the backyard of the house they were shooting at and voila, you cannot tell the difference. Things will inevitably go wrong when making movies so not only do you have to be adaptable, you need to surround yourself with other adaptable folks, especially producers.
    Hire local. When filming in unfamiliar locations you'll need someone on your crew with local knowledge. Andrew shot in Lenox Massachusetts and had local producers and a local AD. Their in-depth knowledge of the area, connections, and ability to navigate local challenges streamlined the production process. They had a ton of solves because they knew the town and the people in it and were able to call in favors. Every production needs a fixer, if you're filming outside a major production town, make sure you have a local expert on your crew.
    Channel yourself into your work. Andrew stated that Onyx is a manifestation of a lot of things that went undealt with in his fifth-grade self. First of all, this is a beautiful sentiment and I really appreciated him allowing himself to be so vulnerable to share this. Second of all, this is a fundamental key to great art which is to channel yourself into it. On the surface, Onyx might seem like a goofy, quirky caricature but there's something very compelling and lovable about him and it's entirely because he comes from a genuine and authentic place. For Andrew, Onyx wasn't just an alter ego but a vehicle through which he was able to recognize and process personal issues. It's pretty profound and a strong reminder of how cathartic art can be. For any creative, remember: your unique perspective is what gives your work its heart and soul so embrace it.
    SHOW NOTES
    Movies/Shows
    House 2British Baking Show 
    Misc
    Adam Dougherty - Creature Designer @Kreaturekid on Instagram or check out: kreaturekid.com
    Follow Andrew Bowser at:
    Facebook:  https://web.facebook.com/AndrewBowserDirector/?_rdc=1&_rdr
    Instagram:  https://www.instagram.com/andrewbowserdirector/?hl=en
    X: https://twitter.com/andrewbowser?lang=enLinkedIn: 
    IMDB: https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0101453/

    • 55 min
    Eli Roth - Round 2

    Eli Roth - Round 2

    Today’s guest needs no introduction, Eli Roth is one of the heads on the Mount Rushmore of horror and for good reason.
    This is actually my second interview with Eli and if you haven’t already, I recommend listening to my first conversation with him prior to this one.
    This time around, Eli and I dug deep into the making of Thanksgiving, the status of Thanksgiving 2, how he comes up with new gore gags, and they keys to running a fun and productive set. Thanksgiving, by the way, is now streaming on demand and available on blu ray.
    Here are some key takeaways from this conversation with Eli Roth.
    Be prepared and pick people up. Eli mentions that the secret to achieving the balance of a fun and professional set is to channel excitement into the work itself, rather than simply goofing off. Though there is a time and place for things like pranks and horsing around, the focus should be on cultivating a set culture that collectively revels in the filmmaking process whether it’s over an amazing shot, a performance, or practical effect. The key to creating this as a director is to be prepared and to do everything you can to ensure everyone else is prepared. Eli also points out that on any project people are going to have bad days and it's important for the set to rally around people and pick them up when it happens. This approach ensures a smooth and cohesive set experience and an environment of trust where everyone feels supported which is the foundation for getting great work done.
    Face & study your fears. Eli is vocal about channeling his own fears and anxieties into his movies. For instance, 'Green Inferno' mirrors his concerns about slacktivism—the millennial trend of supporting causes superficially on social media without any genuine action. 'Hostel' is about xenophobia and the consequences of perceiving foreigners as “the other," while 'Cabin Fever' came from his personal encounter with a parasitic skin disease. Eli underscores the significance of confronting and understanding one's fears as a method to unearth the thematic core of a story, often hidden within these fears. In 'Thanksgiving,' he draws upon his existential unease with the over-commercialization of Christmas, observing how the frenzied consumerism of Black Friday directly contradicts the Thanksgiving holiday's ethos of gratitude and compassion, which became the movie’s theme.
    Misdirect is the key to a good scare. Modern horror audiences are tough to shock; they're well-versed in the genre's tricks and can detect a jumpscare from a mile away. Eli points out that effective scares are all about the misdirect. Emphasizing that the scare works best when it’s off-rhythm after you lead viewers down one path you abruptly divert them elsewhere. He notes that the most successful scares are those that break the predictable rhythm that you set as a director. Eli also stresses the importance of variety in scares and how it's crucial to compare each scare to every other scare to avoid repetition. Audiences are quick to pick up on patterns, so each scare should be unique to prevent them from anticipating them.
    SHOW NOTES
    Movies
    Mute Witness
    The House that Screamed
    The Vanishing (Dutch Version)
    The Prowler

    Filmmaking Tools 
    FrameForge software for previsualization of scenes

    • 18 min
    Eli Roth on THANKSGIVING

    Eli Roth on THANKSGIVING

    Today we have a very, very special guest. Somebody who I've wanted to have on the show since I first started the show a few years ago. That is the legendary Eli Roth. We basically focused the conversation on Thanksgiving, his latest movie, which I highly recommend you go see. In any case, I figured I would give everybody a brief overview of the life and career of Eli Roth before getting to the interview.
    Eli Roth was born in Newton, Massachusetts. His father was a psychologist, and his mother was an artist. He grew up on '80s horror and even had a horror-thriller theme to his Bar Mitzvah, where he got sawed in half. He went on to attend the NYU Tisch Film School, and he made what he called a Tarantino rip-off, a short called "Restaurant Dogs," which he spent about $10,000 on and used as a calling card to get his first feature made.
    His first feature, of course, was Cabin Fever in 2003. So Cabin Fever was based on a real-life skin rash that he got while riding ponies on a farm in Iceland. Turns out it was ringworm, and he claims that when he was scratching his leg, entire pieces of skin were peeling off. He then went to shave his face, and it had affected his face too.
    And as he tried to shave, entire swaths of skin came off of his face. Eli claimed that he essentially shaved off half of his face before realizing this is a perfect concept for a horror movie. He then went on to write the script, but it took six years for him to raise the $1.5 million budget, which he raised through private investments.
    The movie went on the festival circuit, and Tarantino saw it and claimed it was the best new American movie. It was eventually bought by Lionsgate at the Toronto Film Festival in what was the festival's biggest sale and then went on to earn $35 million globally. Perhaps Eli Roth is best known for his breakout horror hit, Hostel.
    This is my favorite Eli Roth movie. There's something about it that I find to be just timeless and ruthless but still a lot, a lot of fun. It mixes brutality with fun in equal measure and it gets really dark and really brutal and really scary, and you almost don't think you can handle it, but somehow you can.
    Hostel was made for a budget of $4 million and opened number one at the box office opening weekend, eventually taking in $20 million in its first weekend and grossing $80 million worldwide at the box office. Eli turned down multiple studio directing jobs and took a directing salary of only $10,000 on Hostel to keep the budget as low as possible so there would be no limits set on the violence. In 2006, film critic David Edelstein in New York Magazine credited Eli Roth with creating the horror subgenre, "torture porn."
    So when you think about it, the early 2000s was a pretty watershed time for horror. The '90s were relatively tame compared to the '80s. Of course, in the '90s you had Scream and I Know What You Did Last Summer, but they paled in comparison to the buckets of gore that we saw with franchises like Nightmare on Elm Street, Friday the 13th, and even the Texas Chainsaw sequels that came out in the '80s.
    However, the early 2000s led to the Splat Pack. This is a number of directors who were considered to contribute to a gleeful revival of gore being put back into movies, and Eli Roth was a big part of it. They include Eli Roth, Alexander Aja, Adam Green, Rob Zombie, and James Wan.
    There were a few others, but these were the main guys credited as being part of the Splat Pack.
    So to put this into chronological order, first came High Tension in 2003, which also kick-started French extremism. That was director Alexander Aja. And that movie is fantastic. I highly, highly recommend it.
    Next came Rob Zombie's amazing House of a Thousand Corpses. I recently bought the Blu-ray, and I think I've bought this

    • 24 min
    Origin Stories LIQUID DEATH CEO & Co-Founder, Mike Cessario [Episode 108]

    Origin Stories LIQUID DEATH CEO & Co-Founder, Mike Cessario [Episode 108]

    Mike Cessario is the CEO and Founder of Liquid Death, an outrageous new canned water brand with quality mountain water engineered to murder your thirst! Liquid Death has made a name for itself as an extremely disruptive force of marketing, and the brand's outlandish marketing stunts are as refreshing as the water itself.
    To date, the brand has convinced 180,000 people to sell them their souls, has cursed its water with a real witch, and performed a reverse exorcism with an accredited warlock that allegedly put demons into the water. Customers who purchased during this time period were entitled to a coupon for $1 off any exorcism (yes, this is all for real). Recently, to further raise awareness of plastic pollution in the oceans, Liquid Death released a series of plush marine animal stuffed toys called Cutie Polluties that were bloodied and choked with plastic garbage. Additionally, as you can imagine, this is a brand whose unholy approach to marketing inspires a lot of controversy and hate, which is why Liquid Death took their favorite angry online comments and turned them into lyrics for their own death metal album.
    Liquid Death also has a very compelling mission, which is to eradicate the overuse of plastic bottles. According to their website, the average aluminum can contains over 70% recycled material, whereby the average plastic bottle contains only 3%. Additionally, aluminum cans are infinitely recyclable, and of all the aluminum produced since 1888, over 75% of it is still in current use. Plastic, on the other hand, technically isn't even recyclable in the first place because it costs so much money to melt it down, sending most of it into landfills and into the ocean. The planet has been overrun by plastic pollution, and Liquid Death is here to do something about it, which is why 10% of profits from every can sold help kill plastic pollution.
    Prior to founding Liquid Death, Mike worked in marketing with companies like Vayner Media and worked on multiple viral promotions for Netflix on series like "House of Cards," "Stranger Things," and "Narcos." The entrepreneurial origin story behind Liquid Death is extremely inspirational and a real testament to how putting passion, fun, and personality into a brand can make it into a formidable game-changer. 
    Here are some key takeaways from this conversation with Mike Cessario.
    Throw the rules away. The world of branding is silently governed by a list of archaic rules that dictate what you can and can't do - if you want a groundbreaking brand, it's time to stop playing by these rules. During his advertising years, Mike asked himself why products, specifically in CPG, had to play by these bland and boring 1950s rules, which entertainment brands were never at the mercy of. As a result, Liquid Death's marketing is brash, violent, occasionally foul-mouthed, and extremely controversial, but as a result, it has a rabid fan base because it's so fun and different. So whether you're starting a new brand or want to do something different with an existing one, consider throwing out the puritanical rule book that's been governing the world of CPG for decades and do something new.

    Ideas don't sell. Proof sells. After coming up with the idea of Liquid Death, instead of running straight toward investors, Mike decided to prove the product's viability in a low-risk manner by producing a commercial for the product before it even existed. The commercial was completely insane, became instantly viral, and Mike set up a Facebook page to gauge interest and found that there was a serious amount of demand for his product. He was even pitched by stores like 7-11. Mike then took this data, made a pitch deck, and was off to the races with investors. Had Mike walked...

    • 55 min

Customer Reviews

5.0 out of 5
17 Ratings

17 Ratings

Manny CR ,

Really good episode with David Prior!

Thank you!

banomassasrv ,

Always informative and interesting

Nick always has interesting guests and asks great questions leading discussions in ways that even the most seasoned fan will get some new insight out of. Highly recommended listening.

Pandasanasoda ,

Great dialogue and format

Nick hosts an amazing discussion that speaks primarily to a horror community, but is truly rich dialogue for artists in general, whatever the format. I think there is an ongoing theme of artistic process, or maybe just defining a plan, then doing that plan. I’m always inspired by these episodes, and Nick is a fantastic interviewer. He clearly does his homework, and has an infectious reverence for his guests. Thanks for making great content Nick.

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