It’s the first full day of the 2011 San Diego Comic Con, and I’m hanging out at the Shout! Factory booth listening to Joe Dante recite the radio copy he wrote over thirty years ago for T.N.T. JACKSON. Heaven. I’m in heaven.

As you probably know, long before Dante was churning out classics like THE HOWLING, GREMLINS, INNERSPACE and so on, he cut trailers for Roger Corman. This was back in the ‘70s, when audiences had an unquenchable appetite for sex, violence and aggressive interior design. And since there were tons of exploitation films jockeying for screens in the marketplace, you had to come out with guns blazing if you had any chance of hooking moviegoers. Killing, screwing, kung-fu… if your movie had any of these elements, they went in the trailer. Also, no one really cared about spoilers back then, so if your movie ended with, say, a spectacular car crash, that probably went in the trailer, too.

If you were the kind of kid who insisted on getting to the theater in plenty of time to watch the previews… well, you’re likely well aware of TRAILERS FROM HELL, Dante’s website dedicated to the fun and artistry of selling movies. It’s one of the internet’s premiere time-sucks: a collection of trailers replete with commentary from some of our favorite writers and directors. Want to hear John Landis expound on the all-star mayhem of Stanley Kramer’s IT’S A MAD, MAD, MAD, MAD WORLD, or Guillermo del Toro hold forth on Lucio Fulci’s ZOMBIE, or Dante dig into BELA LUGOSI MEETS A BROOKLYN GORILLA? Head on over to TRAILERS FROM HELL, and say goodbye the next three hours. It’s amazing how much information these guys can pack into two to four minutes. I just re-watched Landis’s commentary on the Kramer film (which he repeatedly insists contains a fifth “Mad” in the title), and learned that it was Willis O’Brien’s swan song. It’s an incredible resource.

Dante was in San Diego with his producing partner Elizabeth Stanley to promote the just-released TRAILERS FROM HELL: VOLUME TWO, which features twenty brand new trailers with commentary from the likes of Roger Corman, Brian Trenchard-Smith, Jack Hill, Ernest Dickerson, Mick Garris, Larry Karaszewski, Lloyd Kaufman, Mary Lambert, Josh Olson, Michael Peyser, del Toro, Landis and, of course, Dante himself. Also included on the DVD is Corman’s original LITTLE SHOP OF HORRORS, which is presented for the first time ever in anamorphic widescreen!

For twenty minutes, in the middle of a very loud convention floor, I chatted with Dante and Stanley about their plans for TRAILERS FROM HELL, the lost art of cutting trailers, the possibility of taking Dante’s infamous THE MOVIE ORGY on the road, and whatever else came to mind (e.g. INNERSPACE). As always, it wasn’t enough time. Hope you enjoy!

Mr. Beaks: Obviously, I’ve been watching all of the trailers, and following the site as it's developed. Now that you are releasing DVDs, I’m curious: what’s the plan?

Joe Dante: (Laughs) “What’s the plan?” We pretty much play it by ear. This is a very ad hoc development, you know. We didn’t know that it was going to balloon into what it’s turned into. When I first did this, I just found that… I had a lot of trailers. And I thought “Nobody has seen these. I should do something with them. I’ll try putting them up on the internet.” And then I thought “Well, that’s kind of dull. Maybe I should just talk about them.” So I did some commentaries for about four or five trailers, and put them up on the internet. So it sat there for a little while, and… unless some people point you to things on the internet, you don’t just come across them. But some friends of mine saw it and said, “That’d be fun. I’d like to do some of those.” And over the years it just sort of developed. Now we’ve got over 600 trailers up there, with about forty different people talking about them. It wasn’t really planned you know.

Beaks: The thing I’ve found with the commentaries is that they’re nice primers on these movies.

Dante: It’s a mini film school.

Beaks: Yeah. And it gets people excited about seeing a lot of movies that I’m sure they’ve never seen, like some of the Hammer stuff, DONOVAN’S BRAIN….

Dante: That was one of the reasons that we started this. These movies that I grew up with, and you may have grown up with, they were in common usage. People talked about them all of the time because they were available. You would turn on the TV, and there would be one of those movies. Well, that’s not true any more. And if you don’t know where to go to find them, then you don’t know what they are. The old days of turning on the TV and coming into the middle of a movie and saying, “This looks interesting…” well, that sort of doesn’t happen anymore. All of those movies are only played on one channel that a lot of people don’t get, and they are in black and white, so there are a lot of things against them. Plus, they take place in a period that is irrelevant to people under twenty-five. They just don’t get it. I mean, “The ‘60s? What was that?” So we’re basically curating these things, and trying to point people toward movies that they might not have heard of, with actors and directors that they may not know, that we think are worth their time and worth investing in and, hopefully, will spur some more discussion and research and people going in and finding out about these things.

Beaks: So are the filmmakers coming in and saying, “Hey, I’d like to do this trailer and this trailer,” or are you giving them a list?

Dante: Well, I started out with a list because I had a list of trailers that I had access to. We transferred a lot of those, and then we started running out. Originally, it was going to be all horror and science fiction, hence “Trailers From Hell.” But then people came and said, “Oh gee, you know…,” like Larry Cohen said, “I’d like to do SPARTACUS.” So it was like, “Okay, you can do SPARTACUS.” Then some of our writer friends came, and they wanted to do mainstream movies – and that was fine with us because we probably couldn’t have sustained it this long with just horror pictures. Because the other problem is you have to be able to find a decent copy of the trailer. We do have standards; we put some shitty looking trailers up, but only as a last resort. Basically, if they can come up with the trailer, terrific; if they tell me what it is, I can go look for it. But they always choose what they want to do, I never tell them what to do, and I never tell them what to say.

Elizabeth Stanley: I think what’s great is that not only do you end up hearing commentary, it’s not only a primer, it’s also insight into what makes those filmmakers tick, so there’s that sort of double thing that you get from that.

Dante: There’s a lot of people who talk about seeing the movie at the Majestic theater in Weehawken in 1958, and they remember what seat they were in. I mean, those are actually indelible memories for filmmakers.

Beaks: I think Guillermo [Del Toro] nails Argento in that three-minute [DEEP RED trailer]. Nobody has summed up Argento’s career and his aesthetic more succinctly than that.

Dante: And Guillermo comes from a particularly personal angle. And he’s very insightful.

Beaks: So are there any trailers where someone is talking about a movie that maybe isn’t a favorite of yours?

Dante: People have done trailers for pictures that I absolutely loathe. But I write a little intro that doesn’t give away the fact that I hate it, and they can say whatever they want about it, and then people will write in – the trailers all have comments now - and people will disagree. More often they agree, but sometimes they disagree. Sometimes people will really rag on the movies, and say, “This is a terrible movie.” I’ve done a couple. I did a trailer where the DP of the movie called me, who’s a friend of mine, because it was one of his first movies, and he complained that I didn’t have any respect for DPs because of what I had said about this really terrible movie. (Beaks laughs) It didn’t make the movie any less terrible.

Beaks: That’s so funny. I was also happy that Larry Karaszewski did the Frank Perry movie, LAST SUMMER.

Dante: He’s a pretty lost filmmaker. Nobody remembers him. Also, that trailer is not available anywhere: it’s not on the DVD, and it’s not on YouTube. We do try to find things that aren’t in the public eye and put them up.

Stanley: When Joe says he’s run out of trailers it’s not really true; he just has trailers in his collection from some of the most obscure movies on the planet.

Dante: Yeah, movies that nobody wants to talk about, including me.

Beaks: But is there a time frame that you are trying to avoid, or a cutoff date?

Dante: We wanted to keep it in the earlier era, because that was the era where the movies were less known to most of the audience. Also, trailers before 1978 tend to not be copyrighted, whereas things after 1978 are in a grey area. Initially, we stay away from those. We don’t want to do new pictures. We don’t want to do modern pictures unless… like my first one with Lloyd Kaufman: we made a deal and we’ve licensed his trailers, so we’ve done pictures from the ‘90s of Lloyd’s. But usually no one wants to talk about them but Lloyd.

[Everyone Laughs]

Stanley: However, we have done a few post ’78 trailers, and we feel like we have a fairly legitimate fair use about them. Basically, we are presenting them in a critical, academic, educational light…

Dante: We are adverting films after all. Our lawyers have told us that we have a pretty good fair use [argument]. But personally… I wouldn’t want to get much later than the early ‘80s, because I think there is such a treasure trove of movies that need to be discussed out there, and we are limited only by the unavailability of some of the trailers.

Beaks: I mean, you’ve got JAWS on [the DVD]. That’s a film that Universal is very protective of. I figure if you’ve got that on there, you are in the clear.

Dante: I mean, we are promoting their films with their own advertising, so it’s kind of hard to say that we are infringing. All we are doing is promoting, and we are giving them a link to where they can buy it.

Beaks: Well, do the trailer for [Enzo G. Castellari’s] GREAT WHITE and see what Universal does.

Dante: That’s the one that’s on the shelf right? That they bought?

Beaks: Yeah. That they won’t allow to be screened in the United States.

Dante: They ought to revisit that. That is so dated now, the whole idea. They probably don’t even know about it.

Beaks: You know, old trailers are just laden with spoilers; they give away a good chunk of the film. Nowadays, if you even hint at something, people lose their minds. How do you feel about the way trailers are cut today, as opposed to the way they were done back then?

Dante: Well, there’s a sameness to the trailers today. But there’s a sameness to the movies. How many superhero trailers have you seen? How many different ways are there to have a guy running from a fireball? The images are so similar now that the trailers all tend to look alike. In the old days, it was one man and one trailer. When I worked for Corman, Allen Arkush got a trailer, I got a trailer, and we would do the trailers. Now they hire more than one firm to do a trailer and then they take all of the things that they give them, and they cut them up and make a hybrid trailer out of all of the different trailers that they got from these places. There’s no integrity at all to modern trailers. I think it’s kind of a lost art.

Beaks: Of the trailers you cut, what’s your favorite?

Dante: I like the STARCRASH trailer, because it’s nothing but highlights for the movie; it’s the whole movie. And I like T.N.T. JACKSON because it’s got all of these great ad lines, like “TNT JACKSON, she’ll put you in traction.”

Stanley: You’ve got to finish it.

Dante: "This hit lady’s charms will break both your arms. With that dynamite bod, she’s a jet-black hit squad. You’ll know you’ve been kissed by her ebony fist when the blood from your face stains her diamond neck-lace.” That was the radio spot. (Laughs)

Beaks: Poetry. That’s truly what’s missing from trailers today, that kind of writing.

Dante: Well, the ‘70s was a rather unique era, which I don’t think will ever be repeated.

Beaks: Sadly, although who knows? We are heading into a very interesting era with budgets coming down. Maybe more strange and personal films will come out of that.

Dante: Maybe. I was just thinking in terms of the kind of things you could get away with in the ‘70s. In today’s politically correct era, it’s impossible to make a trailer for a picture like GHETTO FREAKS.

Stanley: But I think that on the indie level that may be changing, the fact that you can make things on the internet that aren’t regulated like they are by the MPAA in the theaters. I think you are absolutely right: this time is more like the late ‘60s and early ‘70s - except for the draft - than any time in between.

Dante: And the MPAA has proven to be so irrelevant with the coming of video. I mean, the idea of having to cut your movie so that some teenager can pay to see it, when half the time he snuck in anyway. And then when the movie comes out, he can see it on any number of venues: on television, on video, on his phone - with no idea of what the rating is at all. The rating system is a joke. And yet it’s all they have to cling to, because originally that was what replaced the censor boards. In the kind of era we live in today, you could bet that there would be censor boards popping up in every red state imaginable if there was no MPAA.

Beaks: So what’s up with THE HOLE?

Dante: “What’s up with THE HOLE?” Well, if you live in England or you live in Spain or Italy or Russia or Australia, you can see THE HOLE. But if you live in America or Canada, you can’t see THE HOLE.

Beaks: Are we any closer to some kind of a 3D release for it?

Dante: It’s completely out of my hands. It is indeed inexplicable and indefensible, but, nonetheless, that’s the situation.

Beaks: Are there any other projects you’re working on?

Dante: Yeah, we are always working on stuff. We’ve got projects out the wazoo. It’s all about financing. I have a film that I might do with Bruce Dern; it’s a very low budget picture, an indie which they are getting the financing together for. We have projects of our own. I’ve got a picture called MONSTER LOVE that we want to make in Europe, hopefully early next year.

Stanley: And we are in negotiations with a very interesting French actor that we will reveal when they [close the deal].

Dante: It’s looking like it’s something that might actually happen, as opposed to our other wisps in the wind that we have been following for many years.

Beaks: I love INNERSPACE. It’s one of my favorite films of that era. And you created such a fun and unique world that, at the time, I could very easily imagine a sequel expanding on all of that. Was a sequel discussed? Did you have any idea where you might take these characters next?

Dante: I think they probably put all of the things in place for a sequel. I’m sure they made deals with the actors, and that kind of thing. But it had the worst poster in the history of movies, and the trailer was confusing; you couldn’t even tell it was a comedy, and they didn’t sell any of the people who were in it. They really blew it, because the preview was very promising; they thought they were going to make a lot of money. And then crickets chirped in the theater. But it got found later on video, and now it’s fairly popular. But I think we’ll have to content ourselves with the one we’ve got. (Laughs)

Beaks: Have you thought about taking THE MOVIE ORGY on the road?

Dante: We have had a talk about that.

Stanley: It’s already played at the Venice Film Festival.

Dante: It’s been in a number of festivals in Europe, and we played a short version of it in England - which didn’t work. It’s got to be a long version.

Stnaley: When we showed it at Cinefamily on July 4th, Hadrien and the guys there were sort of saying, “This is really the first mash-up film. It’s really a work of art.”

Dante: So now that the twenty-four-hour movie, THE CLOCK, is a museum installation, we’re thinking maybe [THE MOVIE ORGY] is actually a museum piece. Maybe it’s something that you want as an art show instead of just a movie show. We don’t know. We’ve got the discs. The one thing I do know is it doesn’t work unless you sit through the whole thing, and it doesn’t work unless you see it with an audience. So it will never be on DVD. And if I did own the rights, which I don’t…

Stanley: Wild Bunch approached us and asked how much it would cost to clear the rights.

Dante: I don’t even know what half the stuff is! We probably could [release it]. Again, there’s a fair use thing, but I just wouldn’t want to push it. We would never charge for it.

Beaks: You are right about the crowd. And that reminds me: there’s nothing like watching an audience lose their minds after that “Don’t crowd me” callback. It’s the moment where they realize what the game is, and you’ve got them hooked from that point forward.

Dante: Well, don’t forget Midnight and Squeaky, Andy Devine’s cat and mouse!

Beaks: (Laughs) That mouse is dead, right?

Dante: No, it’s not dead! They are all alive. They are trapped in these little mechanical bodies with their heads sticking out.

Beaks: That is the definitive version of “Jesus Loves Me.”

Dante: There is no other.

[Everyone Laughs]

Beaks: So will you be expanding the “Trailers From Hell” company over the coming year?

Dante: We are always expanding. In fact, there have been some people who have been asking to get involved, which is great for us. It’s just that if I get a movie to do and I have to run away for a while, I’ve got to figure out a way to keep this thing going. Because I’m really the engine behind it, and I don’t know that anybody can do it without me. I write all of the stuff, and I don’t know who else can do that. When I was doing THE HOLE, I kept it going. While I was shooting, I managed to keep writing all of the stuff. But if I went to some place that doesn’t have the internet, I’d be screwed.

Beaks: Well, I want you to get another movie and I want you to keep this going.

Dante: We will figure out a way.

Stanley: Even if it means putting him on speed for a week. (Laughs)

Beaks: I’d like to see what that looks like.

Stanley: Can you imagine?

Dante: I’m already on speed, or I wouldn’t be here.

TRAILERS FROM HELL, VOLUME TWO is available for the purchasin’ now, while the website is constantly updated with new trailers. Go get lost.

Faithfully submitted,

Mr. Beaks