You are now listening to post-mortem with Mick Harris, 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.

I'm Mick Garris and this is post-mortem.

In the beginning, there was the word.

Okay, lots of words, a screenplay.

Though directors are better known than screenwriters in the world of filmmaking,

particularly genre filmmaking,

you can't make a good movie from a bad script.

The importance of the screenwriter

and the foundation of story and plot and characters who resonate

and ring true cannot be overstated. I started writing short stories. resonate and and after 20 years at a keyboard started to make my living as a screenwriter on

Stephen Spielberg's Amazing Stories TV series. A year later I got my first chance to

direct on the Disney Sunday movie called Fuzz Bucket, which I also wrote.

Though the horror genre is filled with directors who also write, John Carpenter David Cronenberg,

West Craven, Eli Roth, Rob Zombie, Jordan Peel, and many others spring to mind.

Most horror films were not written by those who directed them.

For the most part, screenwriters, as crucial as they are to making great movies are anonymous with

unfamiliar names even in the minds of true siniasts. Horror authors, Stephen King

Clive Barker Paul Tremblay, Neil Gaiman, Ramsey Campbell, Sarah Pinborough, and the like,

are deservedly well known in their field, but great screenwriters are rarely heralded in their work.

One of the best horror films in years, in my humble opinion, is a quiet place.

...