Hey, humans. How's it going?
Susan Ruth here. Thanks for listening to another
episode
of Hey Human podcast.
This is episode 442,
and my guest is Shane Peter Day, also
known as Shane Day, also known as Shane
Peter Jeffrey Day, depending on where you're looking.
Shane is a writer, director, and producer. We
met at a film festival in Ohio, nightmares
fest, a great festival,
and he told me about his adventures following
in the footsteps of the beat writers, like
Jack Kerouac, for example.
His stories intrigued me so much. I was
excited to have him on the show. I
asked. He said, yes,
and,
we chatted for quite a while. Such an
interesting guy. Has had a quite a fascinating
life. His most recent film, The Neighborhood at
the End of the World, is making its
rounds in film festivals
now.
Check out heyhumanpodcast.com
for links and to learn more about my
guests and the show.
Hey Human Podcast is on YouTube under official
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And thank you for listening. Here we go.
Shane Day, welcome to Hey Human. Thank you
very much, Susan, for having me. It's lovely
to see you again.
Yeah. You too.
This is great.
We met in,
Columbus, Ohio at the Nightmares Film Festival,
and
your film, The Neighborhood at the End of
the World, got to be shown there. It
was such a great festival.
We've this past month, we've been to, jumping
around to a bunch of festivals,
and that one was absolutely one of the
highlights. We've actually had a couple of movies
play in the past years, but were never
able to travel for them, one of which
was mid pandemic,
and then at that point, nightmares was online,
and so we didn't get to travel. So
this time, we we didn't miss it. Once
we got accepted, we jumped down. Yeah. We
got our flights, everything. Yeah. And I and
and worth it. It was amazing. Everyone was
so nice. All of the filmmakers treat each
other with such
high regard. It's it's lovely. I love the
horror scene for that.
Yeah. And congratulations
on your new award. I saw that this
morning. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you. That was
that one was very welcome.
That one, we received very warmly. When we
made the film, or at least when we
were thinking about the film,
we knew we wanted to make something that
was bloody and fun, basically,
and with a specific target in mind,
which was Luchagore Productions.
They make their films out of Vancouver here,
and Mexico, of course, but I was a
big fan of theirs and have since become
friends with the the director,
Gigi. So I really wanted to make something
that they would watch and think was decent.
And so the fact that they programmed ours
in the most recent
Chilliwack Independent Film Festival, and this was the
1st year for the genre of film award.
So
that and it was presented by Luchigore. So
for us, it was just a treat to
it's the 1st year for that award. It
was presented by Gigi,
and it was a movie that, again, the
target was
Gigi. So,
so it just felt great. Like, all around,
that one felt really good. Well, congratulations. It's
such a cool looking award too. It is
really cool. Yeah. It's fun to see going
to all these festivals and seeing their awards,
you know, when you get them. And I
have my little shelf and but they're all
so different and so cool looking. And I
love it. Yeah. Yeah. We also a couple
of weeks ago, there was another one called
VHS,
the Vancouver Horror Show.
And there as well, we won best BC
short.
And the award itself is an old VHS
cassette with our poster on it and everything.
It's not an easy one to mount because
it's literally a VHS cassette.
So I'm I'm hoping to make like some
kind of base that I can put it
in, but it still looks cool. Like to
have this golden
VHS with our poster on it. I I
do love how every festival, especially in the
horror genre, the awards always look cool. Like
I'm always excited to see what they look
like. When we were talking at the festival,
of course, you mentioned something to me, and
we'll we'll get to that, that I thought
was so intriguing. And and
I'm so excited to hear all about that
too. So but let's start at the beginning.
Tell me about childhood. Well, I grew up
in, a small
fishing town in, Ontario
Ontario, Canada where, it's called Hastings. Both 1,000
people roughly. My mom and my brother, my
older brother
worked at and managed a small video store.
And so for me, I grew up more
or less in a pretty rural environment
with
pretty I mean, in my experience at the
time, a pretty decent video store and library.
And as the youngest of my family,
complete freedom to just
wander
the fields and the river and what on
my own. So I had a pretty, I
will say, a pretty good,
comfortable childhood,
in that I cultivated a love for literature
and film
very early on, and have not let go.
I am being the youngest child myself. I
get the theory of the door opens. We'll
see you when it gets dark out, maybe.
I get Yeah. I was a latchkey kid.
Yeah. Totally. Yeah. Did did you have any
mechanisms of, oh, you can't look at that
or you can't read that, or were you
really a free range child? Like, I
Yeah. I was very free range. I,
so it was the eighties, and it was
the
golden kinda moment for, like, Stephen King straight
to TV made movies.
So I was able to watch all those
live, like, on TV. And I again, so
I was 81, and when some of them
were coming out, it was, like, mid eighties,
the end of the eighties, which meant I'm
quite young. But I watched them I watched
everyone
live with my mom and with my brother.
I would always rent
pretty trashy violent horror films with no no
censor censorship from anybody.
But I will say what's funny,
the only movie that was ever denied me,
and this was my father, so it's it's
a whole other story perhaps, but was Eddie
Murphy's Raw.
His stand up his stand up movie, Raw,
was the only movie as a kid that
I was not ever allowed to watch.
And years years went by, and I just
never watched it, and I and it got
to a point where I was, like, I
I just I didn't care to seek it
out anymore. I was on to other things.
But I finally did watch it when I
was, I probably early twenties,
and it just didn't land for me. And
I just remember thinking, like, this was the
movie that I was never allowed to watch,
yet the very first movie I remember watching
as a kid was Nightmare on Elm Street.
It's kinda just funny to think that I
was not denied horror. And also, my brother
would always buy new Stephen King novels, so
I read Stephen King novels as a kid
as well. So that stuff was never denied
to me. There's movies that
I still haven't watched only because
my family was watching, and I just decided
I wanted to go outside and play. Not
because they were scary or traumatizing, I just
wasn't in the mood, but yet I know
they were just more horror movies that,
were constantly circulating through my house. My mom
wouldn't let me read. I I also was
a free range. My parents
basically, by the time I came along, they
were just tired, I guess. But Yeah. And
house full of books, library,
card,
movies, all the cable stations, everything like that.
But my mom wouldn't let me read it.
She said she said, I don't wanna be
the one
with you in the nightmares.
I'm sure there were a couple that left
me a little
scarred to some degree, but don't think I
was too affected by the books. Because, yeah,
like I said, like, I, like, read lots
of Christopher Pike or, R. L. Stine or
Dean Koontz and Stephen King and different Clive
Clive Barker. There was one author, Peter James,
not the current famous Peter James. It's a
different author, I think. British author who used
to write some pretty fun horror that, again,
as a young person, I loved. I don't
know if they hold up now. That author
had a couple of moments in his books
that absolutely did scare me.
Yeah. But I can't I don't think any
of the Stephen King ones did. I oddly
enough,
they they never left me with any scars
or anything. Was your group of friends into
horror also? I was definitely the weirdo, but
not like, it was it was a kind
of a comfortable
and
warmly embraced weirdo. I was always the one
introducing my friends to pretty messed up movies.
I remember when we were 14, showing some
of my friends Clockwork Orange for the first
time, and these were new friends in high
school who had no idea who I was,
so for them
it was traumatizing. Yeah, that's a big movie.
Yeah. And again, I had already seen it,
I had owned it at that point. When
I think back on it, part of why
I'm
really
pushing forward with horror now,
after several years of travel and other, and
school and other things, is
I suppose partially because I finally have found
a horror community of people that have made
me feel more like that's it's a good
thing to be in horror. Like, it's not
you're not a weirdo so much. Like, I
had teachers
and adults all my life who were always
wondering
why I wrote
horror short stories.
They're always wondering, like, why why is that
your thing? And I I never had an
answer. It was just the thing I would
like to do and the thing that came
in my imagination.
Adults made me feel like a weirdo. Whereas
now now I finally found a community of
people who love horror, and I'm just running
with it because it just feels good to
to celebrate horror with people. When did you
write your first story?
Probably grade 2. Oh, young. What is that?
How yeah. How old is that?
Grade 2 would be around 6 or 7,
I guess. 7, maybe? 7, 8? And I
remember it was called the cat from hell,
and,
Otherwise known as the cat. Yeah. Well, exactly,
like Cats are little demons. I love them,
but they could be demons.
Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely.
I don't recall too much about the story
and what happened. I do know that there
was a moment in it where my brother
dies,
the cat killed the my brother, so I
had to try to kill the cat. And
I remember there's a moment what the only
thing I remember was that I wrote the
line, it's time to send you back to
hell.
And
when I got my teacher to read it,
I remember being so tense that she was
going to get reprimand me for that.
But she didn't at all. Like, she even
read it out loud to me, like, while
we're sitting together. And when she got to
that line, she just kinda kept going past
it. And I remember thinking, like, okay, so
I guess that's okay. Like, I guess I'm
in the clear. What a joy that you
had, firstly, to grow up in a place
where you were in a video store all
the time, where your family was in a
video store, that to me is kid that's
the like in the kid in a candy
store. Yeah. That's exactly what it was. Yeah.
What a great way to give you a
fertile mind. But I can only imagine the
adults, as you mentioned, looking at you killing
off members of your family thinking psychotherapy maybe
is good for this kid.
It's it's funny you say that because just
the other day I was talking to my
partner about how my grandmother and one of
my aunts did have a moment where they
were concerned about me, because I think I
was about 13 or 14 when I I
wrote
an attempt at writing a novel. They were
looking at some of the language within it,
and so they absolutely were a little concerned
because of the language I was using, but
obviously that didn't amount to, I don't think.
I don't think I'm I've turned into any
kind of weird adult, but,
No more weird than the rest of us.
Well, I was just gonna say kinda kinda
sadly. Like, sometimes I wish I was a
bit weirder. Feel like I'm a bit sober.
Vanilla.
That's against you get out all your demons
in That's right. This genre.
That's right. And I always have. Tell me
about when you discovered Jack Kerouac. That was
early high school. It most likely was the
book on the road. There was a point
where kind of like an obsessive
sort of dive, deep dive,
where I just threw myself into the beats,
mid high school, like around grade 10 or
11 or somewhere around there,
and I just ate everything I could, like,
from obviously from, like, the famous ones. But
everyone, even to Carolyn Cassidy, I tracked down
her her version her off the road novel,
and,
yeah, I was just consuming anything by the
beats to the point that my my graduation
quote is from,
is from Kerouac. 2 days after graduation, me
and a few of my friends hitchhiked
through the states to California
and lived in California
for a couple of months in trees and
under buildings and stuff, trying to get that
flavor
that of the beets that we just fell
in love with. And yeah, and I just
kept following. I even followed it around the
world for a while at one point living
in Paris,
and I was gifted
magically
an opportunity to live in a,
Shakespeare and Co, that bookstore across from Notre
Dame.
I got to live in the room that
Lawrence Ferlinghetti
and Burrows and Bukowski and different people all
wrote from, so So that was just like
another magical gift from just being a hitchhiker
and saying the right thing, basically, to somebody.
So, yeah, that's that definitely that journey kinda
continues to follow me around.
That's such an intriguing thing to decide to
do. I'm curious how your family reacted to
that, and
also, I'd love to hear some anecdotal
instances,
especially for a hitchhiker
because that that comes with its own level
of horror, I would imagine at some points.
But tell me tell me some stories around
this.
I don't know what it is exactly, but
I've I feel like I've generally been safe
all my life. Like, I I put myself
in pretty harrowing,
situations. But
when
when I try to recall
the scary or
tense situations,
I actually do struggle to find good examples
because
for the most part, I've been pretty lucky.
I mean, there's definitely been people who appear
and you don't know what to make of
them, and you spend a good half hour
or so wondering
what's this person's deal.
But for the most part, everything's everything always
kinda went
pretty well. Like I have nothing but positive
things to say, like meeting unhoused people who
actually came to inspire
some of my philosophies, you know? For example?
There was one person called
Babylon Bob.
Amazing that I remember that. There was one
person named Babylon Bob, who I met in
under Cannery Row in Monterey, California there. We
were living under some building, like, right by
the coast, it was a derelict building.
1 of the people who came to basically
sleep down there with us was a man
named Babylon Bob,
and
he was just wonderful and terrific. Like, kind
of a Walt Whitman type, you know, long
beard,
very confident and kinda beautiful in their in
their old age. But just had a very
beautiful philosophy on the way way to interact
with a society that's constantly needs more from
you, but gives less back.
And I think characters like him and having
the opportunity to talk to him because he
didn't
again, he was he was unhoused. I don't
I wouldn't say he was homeless, because he
had a beautiful community of people around him
and that he called home, so
his whole view of just kind of living
simply and
and warmly
and openly,
I think, has just carried forward with me
ever since. And, yeah, it's just kinda paid
off. Like, I and and try to try
to give that back wherever you can whenever
you meet a stranger who just just either
needs an ear or they just need
a single word of uplifting
something, you know? How did you support this
lifestyle?
Because you had to eat and things.
Yeah. We
we actually,
at at several points, we stayed with Hare
Krishnas in their temples.
So we would stay there, or we would
find
gardens or
farmland that we would sleep in,
and then kinda just find food not bombs
or different people, like food places that are
offering it, and just kinda learned how to
eat simply and
and, yeah, and just sustainably for ourselves. For
several months, I I think I I think
I went with $45
in my pocket. Like, I left Ontario
with $45 in my pocket and spent several
months on that somehow.
But that was the goal. The goal was
to go with nothing and see what how
we could survive, and I think we just
did, again, off the whether it was the
kindness of strangers or
lucky circumstance of, you know, being in the
right park at the right time when people
are offering food and How many were with
you?
There were 6 of us total, and we
we hitchhiked in pairs,
but we managed to always stay
grouped. Like, even if one got dropped off
hours later, we would just always magically regroup
without really any effort. This was before cell
phones and everything else, so,
yeah, we stayed together the entire time. We
we lived in,
Big Sur
for a while together, and we just camped
out there, and then eventually
we all hitchhiked back up into Canada,
at which point I had family here in
BC, so my uncle took me in, and
wildly took my friends in as well.
So he let us have the basement for
a couple of weeks while we basically regrouped
and got ourselves, you know, ready to either
move on or whatever it was. Yeah. There
were so in in in the end, there
were 6 of us, and,
they're still they're still
very close to me, like, they're still members
of my heart deeply.
Yeah. How do you disengage
from a lifestyle like that? And also, what
was it like with the Hare Krishnas?
The Hare Krishnas were lovely. I my one
of my basically, my first girlfriend that I
ever had in high school was a Hare
Krishna girl, and,
I became very tight with her family.
And I
I loved while I was learning about the
beats and I was learning about existentialism
and such, I was also learning about,
Eastern philosophies. And then when Hari Krishna came
in, it just really seemed to slot in
nice and easily. And it was just, again,
it was something new to
to absorb, and I think that was the
thing about my group of friends was we
were sponges for information and and knowledge. And
so for us, it was
kind of a no brainer. This is something
new to us, and we're saying yes to
it. And they were they were amazing. They
took us in. They fed us. We took
part in their their
festivities. I will say there was one funny
story, however, though, I was reading at the
time, I was reading
this is gonna sound very strange for a
Hare Krishna temple, but I was reading, Helter
Skelter at the time. Oh. And,
because it just happened to me again. I'm
going to California. I'm gonna take Helter Skelter
with me for whatever sick reason.
1 of the Hare Krishna fellas saw me
reading it
and was wondering why I would choose that
over the Bhagavad Gita. And I was like,
well, you know, I'm a reader. I read
endlessly. And he's like, yeah, but there's only
one book that you should ever,
use give your time to. And he's like,
okay. Okay. I get it.
But that was that was probably the only
moment where there was, like, any kind of,
not discrepancy, but, like Yeah. Little conflict of
who I was in that space.
Yeah. Have you read the Barhad Veda? It's
beautiful. I have. Yes. Yeah. It's really lovely.
It is really lovely. I don't think it
would be the only book I'd ever wanna
read, but it's very lovely. That's just it.
Well, that's just it because there's also the
Mahabharata and the Ramayana.
You know, like, those books just throw those
in with that that list. Okay. So what
was your
mode to disentangle
from that life? Because I imagine it shaped
you deeply, especially because you were young
and
we live in a consumer forward world.
So how does one make that transition?
It's a good question. I would say my
answer
was a long one, to be honest. It
was a long
journey, really, because
after that,
I hitchhiked back and forth across Canada a
lot trying to see more of it as
well, and I did that over the years.
And then eventually I ended up
traveling
into Europe
and doing it for a couple years,
and hitchhiking as well there and other things,
which eventually led into
Egypt and Jordan, and then India and
Southeast Asia. And it just I kinda kept
going for a total of I think it
was total of 5 years.
And
in that, I started obviously maturing. I started
getting
more of a desire to have some rooted
space for myself,
especially because I really wanted to
arrange my library. I I desperately just wanted
a space for my books, so that
desire to have a space and kind of
get working in
in culture, in society,
started growing more and festering.
And by the end of my journey, I
was teaching English in Indonesia,
and
as a result, I think I started
warming up to the idea that it's time
to get back to and also to finally
time to actually attack my goals, which was
to be a writer and to be a
filmmaker. And it so I which is was
really difficult
while traveling,
obviously. So I think that had a lot
to do with it. I was just starting
to feel like, okay, I've had a lot
of experiences. I've met a lot of people
and heard a lot of good stories,
but I think it's time for me to
start actually trying to
channel my thoughts and channel all of these
stories that I have, you know,
brewing in my heart. I need to get
them down somewhere and start sharing and learn
and also learn how to communicate back. Basically,
it was it was a good test, all
my travels, to learn how to listen, but
now I I wanted to learn how to
speak and express, and I think that had
a lot to do with it. And so
and also
all of those adventures, I think, in some
ways, really did help strip me of judgement
and expectations
and other things of other people.
So I started to look back into
what my my ideologies
were,
and to hopefully throw them away and start
fresh. And so I think that had a
lot to do with it, was to finally
come back around and be like, okay. I'm
not I'm not a young I'm not a
young beatnik
anymore.
You know?
I I need to
cultivate something else now. And I think what
I what I wanted to do is cultivate
a film community, and
and keep kind of supporting
other artists that I knew, as well as
learning how to collaborate and create a community
with it. So I think that became more
important to me than
than standing by an ideology of anti
anything, really. Were there women traveling in your
group of 6? There was. Yeah. We were
an even split.
One of the no, there was 2 couples.
Actually, no, there was 8 of us, not
6 of us. There was 2 couples
and 2 men and 2 women who weren't
couples. So yeah, it was actually 8 people,
not 6. And yeah. Yeah. Then we had
women with us, and
I can't obviously speak for them, but in
terms of
overall
comfort and safety and all that, I think
we're all pretty good. Like, I I don't
think we ever had any issues amongst ourselves.
And since we were always together, I can't
I don't foresee that anything else came
from any kind of shadows that I missed
or anything. Yeah. I'm sure traveling in a
pack is much safer
than women traveling alone and having that experience.
Was your family growing up
religious at all? Was there any sort of
ideology or philosophy that you had to either
embrace and or shun in order to go
off on your adventure?
Yeah. Actually, we were Roman Catholic, and
I actually loved
being Roman Catholic for the most of my
childhood,
and I think also just my inquisitive mind
just kinda led me towards
recognizing I'm not Roman Catholic anymore. I still
have,
I I will be honest and say that
I I maintain
my,
sort of Christ conscious sort of headspace,
but
when it comes to religion and all that
stuff, I definitely have removed myself from any
kind of organized
cult,
essentially. But I am very thankful for growing
up with it because
I think that actually would be where my
love for story started. I think my love
for story started with the bible because, yeah,
it was it's a fun adventure novel. You
know? Oh, it's epic.
Yeah. It's epic. Exactly. And, and I and
I did love it. I loved going to
religion class. I loved going to church. I
loved hearing about it and talking about it.
But and I and I was absolutely
raised with a bit of a, you know,
the the the ruler as a smack,
if I stepped out of line. So I
definitely know, I definitely did experience
kinda harsh
Roman Catholic
consequences.
But yeah, like for the most part, I
actually had a pretty good childhood when it
comes to my engagement with religion.
So me leaving
religion behind
was a very
intentional conscious choice, not necessarily rejection of anything
bad that happened. It just became part of
the journey of learning for me. Roman Catholics,
if anyone was gonna get into horror, it'd
be the Roman Catholics and their demons and
their saints and all of the That's right.
You know, that there's such great storytelling
in that.
And and honestly, everything's there. Like,
anything that has since been used in in
horror fiction,
rampant through the bible. Right? Right.
From from pretty
horrendous
behavior
that somehow in certain parts is okay or
at least nobody really discusses anymore. I still
come back to it. Like, I'll still
find myself drawn
to it as a story. Like, if I
see a new documentary or a new book
or something, an essay on
religion, I'll absolutely jump in because I I
still have a great love for it. As
I say, as more of like
a narrative
Observation.
Yeah. Yeah. Observer. Yeah. Yeah.
Having traveled
all over the world, did you have any
experience
with anything spooky?
Yeah. Not in your head, but actually in
the world at large. Definitely
smatterings of it in all of my adventures
before Southeast Asia, but Southeast Asia was where
I feel
it was the most real.
Like, it was exactly as you said. It
wasn't my imagination. It wasn't my passion for
ghosts or whatever. It was real because,
staff housing for all the other teachers
that that were teaching in Indonesia.
And
I came late, so everybody kinda comes in,
you know, at certain periods of the year
depending on their contract, but I came in
after most of them had established friendships and
such.
And
I remember this,
home
a couple of nights. I, you know, go
from my room to the bathroom,
and it's dark, and you absolutely do feel
this creeping sensation. Like, and it was intense.
It wasn't just like the usual, like, it's
in my head. It was actually very intense.
And you'd stop, and you'd almost you'd almost
feel the presence actually is on you, and
this happened often.
And often, I would come out of my
room and I would see a silhouette
of
a shadow
with a top hat
as somebody,
and it was very real. It was there.
And
I'd go, I'd either leave the room or
whatnot, and it would disappear, and
it would be there again, or whatever. So
it happened often,
and I remember
later talking to the other teachers,
and
they all started corroborating this that they all
experienced
it as well,
but at different times from each other, and
all kept it secret until they all shared
it. So once I finally shared it, I
was just another person adding to
this.
When I left this place
for years,
every once in a while,
I would I'd hear this buzz, almost like
flies. I'd hear this buzz around my head
while I'm trying to sleep, and there was
never anything there. But it would just be
present, so you just kinda dismiss it. But
I remember living I ended up moving to
a house in Saskatchewan
in the prairies,
and this place was haunted.
It had so many things. Like, doors that
are hard to open because they're pretty wedged
between the carpet and the door frame, so
it's really hard to open. I'd watch those
things slowly open,
like watch it. I'd just be sitting there
writing at night, and it'd be opening.
And so I'd experienced these buzz this buzzing
again.
And soon after that, I learned about the,
I think it's called the tall man or
the tall hat man, or The hat man
is how
he's generally referred to. Yeah. And it's a
lot of times little kids see him. I
just learned about this, and the way they
describe it, even the hat, I was like,
that I saw this person. Mhmm. And then
I kinda kept digging, and I learned that
oftentimes if people
carry their ghost or whatever the ghost gets
latched on,
you can tell by this buzzing sound that
follows you around. And so I started putting
all these pieces together, and I was like,
wait, I think this is there's something to
this. Like, because I'm I'm not I'm not
overly skeptical,
but I'm also not overly
Right.
Open ended, you know? So I I I
can say with certainty that this one was
real. Like, I saw this thing,
this spirit.
I believe it was following me for a
while, and I actually did believe it, like
I would talk about it. And then I
learned about this, and all everything fit. All
the boxes fit. How'd you get rid of
them? I don't remember. We we moved to
a new place, and we did do a
sage spudge,
and things like this, so I'm I'm assuming
that,
like I'm assuming something to this effect, like
some of the things we did for our
new environment
helped perhaps, because it's never happened again since
we left Saskatchewan, which was
now 7 years ago. So the people in
Indonesia
experienced the Hat Man, and then you experienced
it. So you think you brought it home
from Indonesia? Yeah. Wow. Absolutely. Interesting.
My partner, she's from Saskatchewan, but she she
and I met in Indonesia.
So she's one of the people who
who also can can corroborate
that story that she saw it, plus in
the same house,
very fully locked,
all of the women over, I don't know,
it was a year or 2 years,
started having underwear go missing, whether it was
bras or underwear, whatnot.
And
eventually,
they found a way by basically climbing over
the roof of, like, this building, climb over
the roof into the next
apartment, what do you call it, where they
they're all pressed together. There's no there's no
separation of alleyways or breezeways or anything. And
so they went in, and it was completely
abandoned. There's nothing in it. But they found
all of the underwear and all the bras
and everything in neat little
piles
separated by color or separated by type or
whatever,
and the piles were large, which means that
it was going on for a long time.
And no no one has any idea
who was doing this, because, you know, because
the building was abandoned. That's terrifying. We our
building was locked up. Yeah. That's terrifying.
And every bedroom was was padlocked locked, you
know? Like, we had our own locks to
get into the bedrooms.
So, yeah, no idea how any of that
happened. Vent over the head or something.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, so crazy. Messed
up. Indonesia was the place where I do
believe
I I
experienced
this stuff for real, again, not just in
my imagination where I can convince myself I'm
in a cemetery and I we know something,
Indonesia is where I believe it was real.
Like, it was very, very real. And I
thought that was amazing. I thought and I
I connected it to culture too because I
was thinking, like, for them as well, very
real.
Right? It's very real, which to me means
it is. Like, they whether it's manifestation or
what, but, like, it's real now because
to them it is. Absolutely.
Well, that gives you that idea that that
which you put energy into
gets power
and grows.
And I think fear and anger, all these
things can manifest into
its own type of energy
field.
But I saw the hat man when I
was a little kid. I actually was recently
curious about the hat man and did a
little bit of a digging around. And
there
are lots of theories about it, but the
one that seemed to be a common theory
was that he was a
a benevolent demon that would that is attracted
to children who grow up in hostile
environment. Oh. Interesting.
Mhmm. Like a protective demon. He's considered one
of the demon class,
but that he's there to
sort of keep an eye on
children who are going through some stuff.
That was fascinating. That got me into a
whole nother deep dive that there's a whole
class of demons, quote unquote,
who are not necessarily
you think of demon and you think grass,
scary, satan, whatever, but there's this whole group
of demons that are really, like, worker bees.
You know? One is good for fishing. One
is good for, you know, dapper clothes. When
it end up Yeah. Yeah. That was a
fascinating read.
That's interesting to me. That actually makes me
wonder about
when you asked
how did we lose how did we lose
it, essentially, or, like, get rid of it.
The house that I believe we got rid
of it in, there I don't know the
full story, but there was a story
that
so the person who we were renting from
witnessed a little girl
sitting on a bed watching her as she
was, like, putting laundry her way or something.
And and then never saw the girl again,
but she always felt the girl was present.
So
I wonder if if
perhaps, let's say, I did bring the hat
man with me,
found a home where it was actually useful.
It could help this this young girl's spirit
from maybe some trauma that it was trapped
in,
and
that's why I lost the Hat Man because
I it left me to be for another
purpose.
Yeah. You know? Oh, it gives you the
shimmers. That's fun. That is funny. There's a
story now. You and I are both gonna
go write that.
Uh-huh. I love that. I it's actually it's
really I really like the idea of ghosts
being passed on. Not like curses, but almost
like,
I don't know, like a a person, whether
it's a servant or a bully or whatever
it's gonna be, that it actually gets passed
on to someone else now, like it took
an interest elsewhere.
I've interviewed people who have had those experiences
where matronly, grandmotherly
type ghosts tended to them as children, and
then as they grew,
they went away. But then new people came
into the same house and told stories of
the grandmotherly ghost that would tuck them in
at night. Wow. So I think that is
true because and then it it begs the
question, is a
is a spirit
whatever that is, is that energy attached
to places? Space.
Yeah. Or or
you know, I I lived in an incredibly
haunted house when I was in my twenties,
and it was so haunted that I actually
had to break the lease. Wow. Really? Yeah.
Which I've never done I've never done it
since. Oh, god.
It didn't want me there. The house did
not want me there. Wow. I don't think
I was the ilk it preferred.
So it did everything in its power to
get me out, and
it worked. I I I mean, I tried
everything too. I had the priest come and
bless the house. And
whenever my friend's dog would come over,
she was she would refuse to go downstairs.
You would stand at the top of the
stairs and growl down the stairs.
It wasn't a good place.
Wow. Yeah. That I could tell you lots
of stories about that house. I've never
really experienced a negative spirit. Like, so that's
that's the other thing too, is that any
of the spirits I've
I've either
legitimately
interacted with or again,
in my head interacted with, it's never really
been any negative ones. You know? It's it's
always been either safe and it's it's fun
to be scared kind of vibe
or it was yeah. It just was more
present and there was no
real threat of danger or anything. But I've
heard about this lots, obviously, like, coming from
the horror genre, like,
and I'm always curious about that one. Like,
I'm always curious about because again, I've never
experienced it, about
actual
bad energy or, violent energy. And so, yeah,
so when it comes to that question of
what you're just saying, is it is it
the space? Is it the the architecture, essentially,
whether the architecture either,
almost like a conduit,
calls upon them or traps them or whatever
it might be? Or is it the person's
energy?
You know, is it the person's energy that's
kind of
determining this type of interaction you're gonna have?
I do think that spirits
are attached to people. I think they'll follow
them around, certainly.
But, yeah, I think it's anything goes, really.
Yeah. And that's what I love. Is it
all true? Who knows? Is it all not
true? Who knows? But, man, you can't deny
your own experience. That's right. Yeah. Yeah. And
I think about things like what what if
what if there was a tree and on
that tree,
somebody was hung,
for example,
and tragically was murdered. So then their essence
is attached to that tree. And then a
100 years later, someone comes along and chops
down that tree,
turns that tree into wood, and then that
wood is used to build a house.
So now it's
the
the being, the energy that's attached to that
tree is now planks of wood Mhmm. Being
used for a house. Mhmm. Maybe.
I I buy that, to be honest. Like,
again again, the the the creative storyteller in
me has to. Like, that's the one thing
that I have to always do is be
open to every possibility,
and just and I just love it, though.
I love
I love ghost stories so much. Of all
of my horror genres, like, the one
that is sort of a holy grail for
me is the ghost story,
but because I really I want to tell
a good one one day. No. Not not
just
to do it, but to do it
with somewhat of a legacy. You know, Shirley
Jackson's Haunting of Hill House, or even with
Guillermo del
Toro does it with The Devil's Backbone and
certain things. It's like, I wanna be able
to tell a great ghost story
that is rooted in human drama, essentially, you
know, and
and and I really wanna get there, like,
get to a point where
I can do that
subsection of our genre,
a great
service of, like, telling something memorable, not just
exploiting the idea of ghosts or people's fear
of ghosts. Shirley Jackson is so good.
I I love Shirley Jackson. I I've read
everything, and I I read
the Hill House often because it's magnificent to
me. Like, that's just magnificent.
And that was one that really taught me
in a lot of ways what
a good ghost story is,
and then in essence, it's often
it's the people who are haunted, right? Like,
it's not just about a haunted house, it's
about these people in the house who themselves
are haunted.
And
her book was the one
that really taught me that because
the main character
is so
neurotic
and anxious and all these things that, in
a way, she's creating
her hauntings.
Yeah. And I thought that was amazing. And
it really it really shone a light for
me on, like, oh, this is
this is how to essentially approach
the ghost story.
You know? Even even The Shining, like, the
way that Stephen King does The Shining, it's
the same thing. It's it's a haunted man,
essentially. Right? Like, he's got his inner demons.
And I think that's the thing that I
made a ghost story a few years ago
that I made an attempt at doing
with respect to kind of all the things
I'm talking about. But I hadn't read Haunting
of Hill House, so I didn't learn my
lesson about
directing
the the ghosts inward.
I didn't I hadn't learned that lesson yet.
And so I I still think about it.
I'm like, oh, I really wanna return to
that story someday, but I've already made it.
So I'm like, well, maybe I'll just rewrite
it and give it a different title. Absolutely.
Yeah. There are no rules. I think it's
interesting too that even science has come on
board and said, well, teenagers who are so
full of angst and hormones
can cause weird things to happen, electrical
abnormalities and things moving across the room. I
totally buy that. My so my partner's a,
grade 6, 7 teacher. Bless her. Oh, I
know. Beg her for her service. Right? Yeah.
And it's funny.
Some people who get it and some people
don't necessarily get it right away, grade 6,
7 sounds to be the worst age.
Because you're 12 to 14 or what, and
all the hormones are going crazy, but you're
still a child. You're still in that childish
state. You're not actually quite an adolescent yet,
and it just sounds nightmarish. And I think
about my childhood, I'm like, yeah, that's when
I was the worst. You know, that's when
I was a terror to my teachers.
And, yeah, I will. I'll I'll share that
with her. But, yeah, she and some of
the things she tells me, I I can
buy. I could I could buy what you're
saying based
on those energies. Like, all of those energies
just
crashing together.
You know?
Yeah. Yeah. Alright. Let's talk for a second
about Neighborhood at the End of the World.
What was the what was the energy around
that,
and what's the plan with it?
The original intention for for Neighborhood was
to just essentially make a solid enough short
film
that would
draw some attention
so that I could
propose some of my features that I've been
writing and hoping to get funding for,
and leave it as a short story. Leave
it as a short film.
But since we've made it, and since it's
been getting a pretty warm reception,
my producing partner John Warren and I, we
had a conversation about
telling people that we had the intention of
making it a proof of concept,
because now we've come up with basically 2
completely different but equally
good, I think, features based off this short.
So I've been writing both of them. I've
got them both outlined, and I've got a
couple drafts already,
but I'm making my way through
those drafts for
a feature version of Neighborhood.
And
so at this point, now the intention is
to
try to find funding and go forward with
it. One of them is a larger
scope.
It's
it's one that I would need,
not a significant budget, but as you know,
like, a significant budget is significant.
Like, it's 2,000,000 is a lot of money.
To some filmmakers, it's not, but to me,
it is. Whereas the other one,
the other version that we've been writing, the
plan with it is to try to maybe
do it on our on our own. Because
we made the short on our own, and
we treated it like a feature in the
way that we we did have a production
house.
It was during the strikes, so we had
2 months of
no work, and we just we worked every
single day. We'd go in in the morning,
and we worked every day treating this like
a feature.
And so the fact that we went through
this together and we had amazing
heads of department working with us,
and,
you know, and each one of them absolutely
pushed us to do better. Every time a
new person came on board, it became this
this additional,
feeling of, okay, well, now we have to
honor them. If they're now doing wardrobe or
that person is now doing stunts or something,
I want them to be proud of what
they contributed.
So it pushed us to do
to basically try to make a better film
than we intended. Like, we always intended to
make a good film, but by the end,
we made I think we made a pretty
solid,
well produced
film that
every person could be proud of that that
worked on it. And so saying all that,
the the hope would be to invite everyone
back
and say, let's let's move forward and make
this a feature together,
Because I think you know as well, in
Vancouver,
the the talent pool is huge. There's so
many great filmmakers out here, but we're a
service town. We're not really a creative town.
People don't hire the writers and lead actors
from Vancouver, but they hire all the service
and all the labor.
So there's a there's a real desire here
in Vancouver
for
creative original content. Like, every a lot of
these people here, they don't wanna just be
laborers, they wanna be artists.
So it it's it does create a pretty
unique and
amazing opportunity for all of us to work
together, because
we know what we're doing. We've been in
the industry for years in
many departments and many capacities.
We've all had
15 hour overnights, you know, like for years
straight. You know, we've all kind of experienced
that, and now it's a matter of how
about we start
working on things that we believe in rather
than constantly giving our labor over to terrible
television,
which is basically what we do here. Sorry
TV, but don't be paranoid, but that's just
how I feel. But Canada is really good
about grants for the arts.
It's not
as great as it used to be. It
used to be much better. I shouldn't say
that. You're you are right. There's there is
a lot here, but
a lot of it does seem to be
more eastern
focused, like it's in Ontario and Quebec, a
lot of it. And you can tell, like,
a lot of those I would say that's
where some of the best movies in Canada
come from. So I don't know if that's
a matter of they deserve the grants or
the grants are
basically effectively working. You know, like Yeah.
Because some of the best stuff comes from
there. Out here in BC, we're pretty limited,
and it also means
the competition
is much greater.
So it does become pretty difficult
to get those grants here in BC,
which is why me and my producing partner,
we work full time
in different departments to pay for our own
projects. Yeah.
I really wanna work with this team again.
I really we've all but
I feel
this this movie was definitely the one where
I learned how to do my job. Like,
I actually
finally understood really what my job as a
director was.
You know, I think before I was
kind of a producer director,
that's in a way micromanaging.
And I recognized that that's not that's not
really what I wanna do, but I didn't
really know how else to do it. And
then I finally learned how to not be
a producer, but to just focus and be
a director, and what that actually meant. And
so so many lessons came from that, and
I really would love
to to honor this team that made this
movie with me by
by bringing them work, and by bringing them
something where they're free to be creative, especially
my, wardrobe
my wardrobe team, led by Tina Tam, she
was incredible, and I wanna be able to
give her a larger canvas to play. Yeah.
I feel that about mine as well, that
regardless of what I do,
whether it is an offshoot from the short
or
something brand new, I wanna work with these
people that Mhmm. You know, it was so
much fun. I loved it so much, and
they were all brilliant at their Mhmm. At
their contribution.
It's awesome. How lucky are we that we
get I know. Do this?
And and the and those those people who
get to do it full time, like, properly
employed doing it, I'm I think that's the
luckiest thing in the world. Luckiest thing. You
know? But I'm not not to not to
take away from us
as as indie artists. Yeah. Like, it's also
the best thing in the world. And I
I remember after
our film was wrapped, because we shot it
for 5 days,
and when it was wrapped,
I remember just thinking, like, I wanna do
this
every day. Like, this is the job I
want. I wanna do this every day for
the rest of my life. I wanna direct.
I wanna be on set for 12 hours
a day as the director because I loved
it. I loved every second of it. Same.
Same. Yeah. Yeah. It's it was it was
because it it really does fit with so
many of the things that I think I've
cultivated for myself over the years in terms
of the community building, the respect for others,
and making space for them, and also just
constantly learning how to articulate
and express yourself,
and also,
learning
new
new approaches
to managing your
emotional emotions.
You know? Because I I think for the
most part, I would see myself as pretty
level headed and calm in most of what
I do, but yet, every once in a
while, I'll surprise myself by being
maybe a little, whingey, or, you know, I'm
I'm just I'm getting I'm starting to get
anxious because of this or that thing, and
then I catch myself, I'm like, okay, that's
not what you wanna do. So to to
kind of put myself in a situation where
I'm learning,
I suppose, new triggers or what about myself,
I think is also great. It's exciting and
it's scary, but I actually think it just
adds to,
you know,
the overall intention, which is to keep growing
and keep evolving, but to do that with
others. You know? Yeah. I can tell when
I see a film. I can tell the
directors who truly
love
story.
Who really understand
story.
And not just the words on the page
that the actors are saying,
but every single part of it, the lighting,
the the location,
the clothing The color choices.
The color,
the sound,
the music,
everything,
the lack of sound.
It's all
it's when you see something like that, you,
when you leave the theater and just,
it almost takes you a mo you know,
I mean, I have been at the end
of movies and needed
some time
sitting there before I vacated the seat because
of what I just experienced.
You know, that there's nothing like that. And
then the communion of being in the theater
with people watching, whether it's your own movie
or other people's movies,
that feeling of,
you know, everyone jumping or everyone laughing or
just that beautiful, beautiful communion. There is nothing
like it. It's so great.
I I completely agree. I completely agree. I
still insist
going to the theater for every horror film,
new horror film, because
watching a horror with an audience is So
great. So much fun. It's so great. Because
whether whether it's the the jokes
laughing with people,
or or cringing and squirming with people, or
it's it's one of the greatest experiences. And
I don't, I know that a good comedy
or a good action movie or what could
deliver that as well,
but I find more consistently, horror does it.
And, yeah, and and going to these festivals
and watching
horror with either the filmmakers or just fans
of it,
it it's always
that's that's my rock concert. That's my my
music festival. You know? We're sharing in the
same love for the thing.
And, yeah, there's nothing like it, truly. You
know? I mean, obviously, to everyone else, it's
gonna be something different. Going to a music
fest for them is the thing. Yeah. Of
course. Yeah. Yeah. But,
I I I love going to the theater
and watching movies with people, and especially
especially when it's a movie that does
kinda
it goads goads the audience into certain reactions.
It's nice to see how well that worked
or didn't. Yeah. You know? Oh, totally. Yeah.
Absolutely. And it is you know, I come
from a songwriting background. Every every word is
important in a song and the melody and
all that. Everything is so important.
It's really interesting
as a songwriter to listen to a song
now. Any song is to try to not
hone in on just the lyric or just
the melody, to hear it as a whole.
And now when I'm in the theater, because
I'm in this mindset of having made my
first movie,
I'm like, okay. Just watch the movie as
a whole. Don't be like, look at that
lighting or look at da da da. I'm
trying to see the whole thing. It's hard
sometimes.
It's so hard.
Yeah.
I know. I still I still do it.
And and it's funny because sometimes
it can go both ways, where you're sort
of pulled out of the story or the
movie because you're noticing these things.
But then there's sometimes it's the movie so
good, you can't help but notice those things.
Right. You know? And it's just like, you
know, sometimes if I'm at home, I'll pause
it just to take a breath and be
like, did you did you see how well
that was blocked? You know? Did you notice
what the actors did in that? That was
incredible. Yeah. These little magical things that
that are done
that for the most part, I think people
just take it in. Maybe they don't notice,
but it's it's so lovely to see those
choices being made.
Mhmm. It makes me feel very cared for
and loved as a con as a consumer
of the of the art form.
That's a good way to put that. Yeah.
I agree with you. I I agree with
you. Like, I can I always feel that
as well that
I I do feel
that when we buy the ticket,
we are
we are ultimately,
putting our faith in,
you know, a
a good
ringmaster of some kind that understands there's an
audience there and this is for them or
whatever?
And when you there's some filmmakers right away,
you can feel
you trust them and you feel like I'm
they
I whatever they do, I'm in. Whatever they
do, I'm in. Even if it even if
it hurts.
But whereas there's sometimes you can feel it,
and you're like, yeah, you you don't you're
not caring about the audience at all. You're
trying to show off something else, and that
doesn't feel
doesn't feel sincere.
You know? I think that's the one thing
I can always tell in a film or
a book as well, the sincerity
of of the the artist where you can
be like, I get what you were doing
here, but you weren't doing it for the
right reasons. You know? You don't you're not
actually exploring this because it means something. You're
exploring it because you think it has shock
value, and that's it. Or something. Right? You're
not it doesn't work for me. Right. It's
funny how we feel that stuff on a
real deep level.
Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. And and it and it
doesn't matter if it's budget, because I've seen
indie features or indie shorts that are,
production wise,
terrible,
You know, they weren't made by people who
have figured out the tools yet,
but the heart was so clear.
The sincerity was perfect.
And then there's movies that are big budget
or mid range budget,
and immediately, you can be like, yeah. This
is so insincere. I'm out. I'm out because
you're you have no respect for your characters,
the story, or me.
I'm out. You know? And you can feel
it. I think you can feel it instantly.
Sometimes things
have bumpy starts. Like, sometimes they're you have
to you have to watch for that 30
minute mark or something because sometimes people Find
their way.
Yeah. They find their way. And I can
testify that I'm the same. My
my opening scenes,
I think, are maybe a touch longer than
they need to be. You know? I do
notice that. I'm like, yeah. Because I remember
I had this intention of coming into it
slowly, but that's too slowly. You know? But
I have to live with it, and Yeah.
It really is a dance. All of that.
Yeah. Yeah.
Janet Yeah. Planet. Talk about a slow I'm
gonna write this down. It's really quite lovely.
It's a slow build, but I really loved
it. And I as I was watching it,
I thought
so many people are gonna turn this off
because
they their attention span won't be able to
handle
the the
the the length of time it takes, but
it was with such care.
And
to me,
the
the time it took to get to things
was, from my perspective, perfectly telling the narrator.
It's really told from the perspective of the
little girl. And for little kids,
time feels
extraordinarily
long. So I just thought, well, what a
lovely thing that the director realized
and and really put us in the world
of this small child navigating
this world and everything
is is
takes forever.
Like, everything is a draw, you know, a
slow
climb to whatever is coming next, you know.
I really dug it.
I actually really like slow paced films. I
actually am one of those people who love
slow burns,
you know, the meditative sort of film. I
love that a lot. But we have to
remember the reason why stories are made. Right?
They are escapism.
They are, you know, they are a place
for us to let go.
And I think our world now is so
fast paced and our attention span is so
short
that
if we can embrace the gift
of the 2 hours or 3:3 hours is
a long time for to get people to
sit, but sometimes it's really worth it. Or
just to sit and read or whatever. The
the
the gift of that is so extraordinary
in a world that
doesn't want us to slow down even for
a second.
Did you did you happen to see,
Drive My Car?
It was,
I think I think it's an Apple TV
movie, or at least they acquired it. I'm
trying to remember the director.
It's a Japanese film.
Slow. Like, I think for people who can't
take a slow movie, it's slow.
But it's so beautiful. Like, for me, the
length of every scene felt correct. Like, it
just I always felt like
almost
right as you're starting to feel like, okay,
I got I got what I needed, It
would cut cut to a new scene. You're
like, okay. Good. Like, I feel like I'm
I'm I'm in the rhythm with this film.
That's a really good way to put it.
That's such a good way to put it.
Getting into the rhythm of the film. Right.
Perfect example.
Yeah. And
I I love that sort of thing. The
Drive My Car is not a horror at
all. It's the human drama and but it's
so beautiful. It is very beautiful film, but
also its pace is,
again, like, to some, it would be slow,
but to me, it was it was perfect.
I just
Yeah. I'll take it out.
Yeah. Do. I think that I think that
same filmmaker, he did a movie a couple
of years before called The Burning. Maybe it's
not Japanese. Maybe it's Korean now that I
think about it because I think The Burning
is Japan is Korean. But he did a
movie a couple of years ago, The Burning
with Steven Yeun. And same thing, like, it's
it's a really the reason I bring that
one up is because that one's a little
more
potentially on the thriller
side. It's not it's not really, but it
definitely has that,
aspect. And the same thing, he brings this
nice, slow,
meditative pace to it. Almost like a Henneke
movie or something, like, and I and again,
I just love that.
I like Korean noir a lot. Oh, man.
I don't know I don't know what's going
on over there, but they're killing it with
their movie.
So they're so good. So good. I don't
I honestly don't you know, every once in
a while, like, every
generation of filmmakers, there is a moment where
you're like, oh, in that 5 year win
window,
these movies from
Austin, Texas or something, they were they were
just the best. Or these these past 5
years, it's all been from Mexico or something.
And it just seems for the last, like,
10 or 15 years, Koreans have been
making just Killing it. Yeah. Like, I I
almost I can't turn down a Korean film
if it's if it's suggested because I've not
seen one that
I'm not impressed with. Yeah. I feel the
same way. Yeah.
Yeah. Killing it. Shane, you're delightful.
Oh, thank you. You too, Susan. I'm I'm
really glad you asked me to do this,
because,
yeah, we had a really nice rapport, obviously,
when we met at nightmares in Columbus, and
so I'm really I'm really touched that you
asked me to
to carry on our conversation, and then in
this capacity, so it feels good. Totally my
pleasure. Absolutely.
Tell people how they can find you so
they can keep track of your your movies
and things. I am I'm a very poor
social media person,
but I am getting better at Instagram, and
I have been posting through my company, Skinner
Street Films,
as well
as my own handle, Shane Peter Day. And
skinnerstreetfilms.com
is where you could also find me and
contact me, have a look at some of
my other projects and projects that I've produced,
or,
and then in the works and whatnot. And
yeah, I'm happy for people to reach out.
I want I've always talked film and literature
with people,
and anyone who's interested in story shopping.
That's one thing that I absolutely
stand behind as something for myself is that
I'm very I'm a very good story
consultant.
I love rapping on story. I love,
like, instantly, like, any topic
you wanna play with, we can find an
avenue for it. We can figure out where
the story is gonna go, and I and
I love doing that. That's my one of
my
greatest joys. And I'll put your information on
Hey Human Podcast website on the links page
too, so it's easy to find if for
whatever reason they need to go look in
one place. So I'll do that too. Thank
you, Susan. And please keep in touch. I
will. It was wonderful.
Thank you. And thank you for listening everybody.
Bye.
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Thanks. Bye.