Shock Value - Jason Zinoman [119]
Friedkin pauses to register how his revelation is being received and then smiles. When he started working on The Exorcist, Friedkin did not believe in God or demons or the Devil. But like all those audience members fainting and having seizures in the theaters, the movie’s impact may have startled even him. It changed his life. In discussing the root of evil today, Friedkin reveals something about why the movies of the golden age of modern horror were so terrifying. When trying to figure out what could possibly have motivated the most notoriously evil dictator of the twentieth century, there was only one thing he refused to consider: that Hitler could not be explained. That was simply too much to bear. It’s enough to make your head spin.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The first movie that seriously shook me up was Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer. I saw this grisly slice of life when I was about twelve in the basement of a friend’s house and still recall how its matter-of-fact staging of violence made my body tense up into an almost paralyzed state. Leaving me unsettled for days, the movie was revolting, gruesome, and morally suspect—and I loved it. Since this book began as a way to better understand one of my favorite things, what happened in that basement was like, to use the language of classic horror, the moment when the mad scientist shouts: “It’s alive!”
I explored the horror genre first in a feature story for Vanity Fair that Michael Hogan commissioned, guided, and championed. His invaluable editing helped me understand the scale of the story and strengthened my book proposal, which was deftly handled by my agent Farley Chase. Jane Fleming bought it for The Penguin Press, and when she left the publishing house, Laura Stickney took over, providing an incisive, meticulous, and tough-minded edit that vastly improved my manuscript. I am grateful to her for that. Bill Picard, who assisted with fact checking, saved me from more embarrassments than I would like to think about.
I greatly benefited from many editors who have worked with me on articles about the genre, including John Swansburg at Slate, Julian Sancton at Vanity Fair, and Scott Heller, Stephanie Goodman, Andrea Stevens, and Lorne Manly at The New York Times. John Williams, who runs the excellent book review site The Second Pass, also published my writing about horror and has been an excellent sounding board for ideas. Webster Younce, a gifted book editor, has consistently guided me through the wilds of the publishing industry, and Jeremy Dauber, Jon Fasman, James Ryerson, Steven Boone, Michael Schaffer, Tony Timpone, Natalia Antonova, Brett Martin, and Livia Bloom generously offered wisdom and advice.
Hundreds of artists, family members, journalists, and producers took the time to talk to me about their work and the genre. Most of my reporting took place in Los Angeles, which for a New Yorker who doesn’t drive means that I relied on a battalion of drivers numbering too many to mention. An equal amount of gratitude goes to Misha Collins and Daniella Meeker for giving me beds to sleep on. Jeff Gramm and his parents Phil and Wendy kindly offered me an apartment at a critical moment when I needed a quiet, isolated room