You are now listening to Pokedmortem with Mick Garris, where the most influential voices in horror cinema will spill their guts, literally, to the renowned horror director, writer and producer.

Now, here's your host, Mick Garris.

Just a quick program note before we start the show.

This episode was recorded before our long and unexpected hiatus, so I just want to update something we didn't cover in our interview.

I'll be gone in the dark, a hugely gripping documentary series that Patton produced, based on his late wife Michelle McNamara's book about the tracking of California's Golden State Killer, is now available on HBO Max, and I can't recommend this highly enough.

Also, his latest Netflix stand-up special, I love everything, is available now, and need we say hilarious. So let's get started.

I'm Mick Garris, and from the social distance of nice guy productions, World Headquarters, overlooking the vast San Fernando Valley, this is Postmortem.

We've spoken before, and we'll speak again of the relationship between comedy and horror.

The physical reactions of laughs and screams, the shared experience and visceral roots.

The best horror and the best comedy come from a deep abiding truth, something so raw and honest, that it can mean breaking boundaries and taboos to get there.

The correlation between comedy and tragedy is also nothing new, and it relates equally to horror.

Pain is real, pain is relatable, and shared pain can ease the agony, and just taking a sideways step till after can ease the shared pain considerably.

David Kronenberg's powerful early film The Brood came from the agonizing disintegration of a marriage gone wrong.

Its killer kids, given birth from membranes outside the mother's body, are monsters from the id, given life by anger, fury, even hatred.

It comes from personal pain and the power of the drama from such an intimate place, drives the horror that we feel as if it is our own.

There's plenty of horror that is not so personal, some of it great and scary and recreational, but the movies that come from a place of personal pain are the ones that stick in the brain.

There's plenty of really funny comedy too that doesn't dive deep, but the tie between laughter and tragedy is also tight.

I was fortunate enough to see live stand-up shows by Andy Kaufman, Richard Jenny, Robin Williams, and Bill Hicks, all of whom performed with breathtaking openness, well maybe not Kaufman, and all of them gone tragically early.

One of the most painful, emotional, and hilarious stand-up comedy shows I've seen is The Netflix Special Annihilation by our guest, Patton Oswald.

It's all about losing his wife, hardly what you'd expect from a comedy special, but see it and cry and laugh a lot.

It will do you a world of good.

So with no further ado, Patton Oswald, can we talk?

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