This is a complete transcript of the first episode of Fantasy Screens Podcast.
Intro: Hi, this is Paul from Fantasy Screens. We’re a venue management company. You might have seen us in the news, although we’re not actually tech bros; that wasn’t accurate. Anyway, we love your programming, and we’re wondering if you’d be interested in working with us. Let me tell you about the venue.
*Excellent intro music plays*
Paul Salt: Hello and welcome to Fantasy Screens. Name still kind of pending. The podcast that takes you behind the curtain and beyond the stars. Well off planet anyway. My name is Paul Salt and your programmer this evening or whatever time you’re listening to this is programming legend, half of category H, Queen of the Rio, Claire “Scary Claire” Harrison.
Claire: Hi Paul.
Paul: Hi. You have undertaken our challenge to prepare a program for an impossible venue and this season’s enormous inaugural venue is the surface of the Earth’s moon. The moon. The moon. Do you like the moon? Are you a fan of the moon?
Claire: Love the moon.
Paul: Love the moon.
Claire: Yeah, I’m a woman. What’s not the love?
Paul: It’s underrated. So, first things first, I offered you two scenarios to choose from. Either you could organize a screening for the residents of a lunar colony or an earthling cineastic day trip to the moon. Which have you chosen?
Claire: Okay, if I’m being honest, you remember when earlier I said that I kept going back and forth between this. So, I initially wanted to program for residents of the moon. And that was kind of what I went into this program thinking about. But as I was thinking more and more about the program once I had decided, I realised I think it actually might be more beneficial for Earthlings who are visiting the moon to see, yeah.
Paul: Okay, so it’s kind of like you designed a program for one, but then for actually they’re not the ones who need this. Yes, exactly, Amazing. So in that case, we’ll jump to the chase. What are we watching?
Claire: We are watching a double bill. Oh wait, we are watching an eco-horror Le Vampire from 1945, short film, with the 1972 eco-horror classic Frogs.
Paul: Incredible. Okay, so set the scene for me. First of all, who is the ideal audience for this? So tell me who you’d like to be attending.
Claire: So, I mean, obviously I don’t want to discriminate if moon people would like to come to the screening. I think they would love it. You know, as I kind of initially went into this thinking, this is like a nice introduction to kind of animals, right? I think when you’re on the moon, there’s no animals there. So like, it would be nice and refreshing for moon people. to be watching movies that has a lot of earth fauna and kind of educational about animals. Not fully, but a little bit. But as I, as I love eco horror. And I think that it’s a very important way in which we as Earthlings and humans interact with the environment as opposed, I think a lot of people are just, they love to watch, planet Earth or more like documentary type things that show more eco beauty. But I think in terms of environmentalism and saving our planet, eco horror is a much more interesting usually has a much more interesting take on the way that we treat our environment and the way that we interact with the environment. So I think having earthlings watching from the moon these very eco-horrific films. one is eco-horrific. The other one’s horrific and different. We’ll get into that later. But it’s, you know, it’s kind of a cautionary tale. It’s a nature fights back kind of movie. So yeah, that’s who’s watching, yeah.
Paul: Absolutely. And where better to have that in the sort of barren expanse of the moon?
Claire: Yes.
Paul: This is what could be waiting for you if you could fuck with the frogs.
Claire: Yes, exactly.
Paul: So thinking about though the colonists like being, this is not a flattering comparison, but thinking about the colonists on this dark, dead, inhospitable wasteland and like bringing them like images of nature, is that something you have to bear in mind when you’re programming in London? Because you do a lot of your programming in the city. Do you ever think about like, let’s take a break from the urban hellscape that is the average community thing when you’re considering your programs?
Claire: You know, I actually haven’t. I love Eco Horror and I’ve wanted to do some Eco Horror Nights with Category H for a long time, but we just haven’t, you know, we come, we, you know, it’s a collaborative thing with my amazing programming partner, Molly Miles. And so often, you know, we’re pitching ideas to each other and then combine our tastes. So eco horror just hasn’t come up. We’ve talked about it, but I haven’t, yeah, I just haven’t, I guess, thought about, I haven’t thought about that at all, but now I am.
Paul: Does like London player factor into? Because obviously you have to think about audiences when you’re sort of planning what you’re going to show.
Claire: It doesn’t necessarily, I think in terms of the audience that I program for and curate for, they are late night audiences. So I think more of those factors of what are we watching at midnight? What are we watching at 2:00 in the morning? And how will your sleepiness affect had the way in which you’re watching it. there are plenty of films, like Eraserhead that are quite literally films that were made to be watched late at night. And so it’s kind of, and then also, we do very like, we try to pair things that also make you think about them differently. But I don’t think environment has really played super into the factor of my programming outside of historical context of programming at places like the Rio Cinema. I think a little bit when we were doing more unconventional venues like bars, bar basements, We kind of had to factor in, through a learning process, had to factor in like, will we have to do shorter films, can’t do a full double bill because it’s uncomfortable folding chairs and there’s bar noises. So I guess the environmental factors you have to think about when you’re at an unconventional venue, but when I’m programming at a cinema, whether that’s within category H or just regular programming, It’s a venue that’s built for it to kind of escape into another world. So I guess I don’t really think about that as much.
Paul: Yeah, like a little space where you can build whatever it is you need to build.
Claire: Yes, I will say also I wrote my dissertation on open air cinema exhibition. So I do think about that. I think about it in that way as well, but I personally have never programmed in a professional context for outside. But I do think a lot about environmental factors when picking films for screenings outside. Definitely.
Paul: Well, speaking of open, though, not necessarily air, let’s have a look at this venue. So what are we doing? Are we outside in spacesuits? Are we under a big dome? Or something like, how do you see the sort of screening kind of playing out?
Claire: I would prefer a big dome as a venue. I think I like the idea of kind of having, still being able to see the stars and see the landscape. I don’t love the idea of space suits because I especially, I thought a lot about this when I went to a rooftop cinema experience because for those, especially in London within the city, you have headphones on and it kind of turned the whole outdoor be watching the experience into a very individual experience because you can’t talk to your friends around you because you all have headphones in. And I think that the same will go for the moon. While I’m obviously not encouraging people to talk, it’s a communal, cinema going is a communal experience for the good or bad, you know, people talking or whispering or dropping their phone or whatever. All of that factors into the experience of it. And so I’d rather everyone kind of be in the same.
Paul: There’s something about the screen at the Barbican, specifically not the big one, the two little screens. When somebody drops their phone in those two screens, it is the end of the world. Just a massive slam, like they dropped a brick out of their pocket. I have no idea why this would be. Fortunately, on the moon, it will take a while for it to sort of drift down to the ground. So it won’t be a factor. There’s only improvements. One thing that’s not an improvement is I was reading a little bit more today about life on the moon. And one thing that was interesting was the idea the screen is going to have to be robust if you went the spacesuit option, because moon earth is apparently really gritty. There are mini meteors that our atmosphere filters out that the moon doesn’t. So, and also the intense heat would probably warp and mess up the screen. So there’s every chance the screen will disintegrate during the screening, which might be interesting. Like you could show something like The Last Daigon movie, Resurrection, like with the disappearance of cinema and have the screen literally.
Claire: Yeah, some or some nice experimental films.
Paul: Interaction between destruction and projection could be, could be interesting. But we’re in a dome. We’ll be safe. We’re in a dome.
Claire: We’re in a dome.
Paul: And we’re projecting within the dome like onto a screen as opposed to like onto like, I don’t know, a mountain or something.
Claire: Yeah. I guess I don’t really know much about it. I don’t know that much about the moon landscape besides craters. Maybe I should have looked into that a little more.
Paul: It’s fine. We’ll just, we’ll have a screen inside the dome. Now, tell me about the moon sky, which is something that I became inordinately obsessed with during my prep for this and sent you a very lengthy description of the different options that could be available. The dome will be heat and cold resistant, so you don’t have to worry about people incinerating and or freezing to death. Amazing. Which you don’t want to worry about when you’re doing a film screen.
Claire: Really? Yes. You want people to be comfortable, but you don’t want them to be too comfortable that they fall asleep, but you don’t want them to be so hot that it’s like, everyone’s sweating and stinky. So even regular screens, I think about that a lot, but it’d be nice if it was just the perfect temperature on the moon.
Paul: I’m sure we can regulate that. It’s tricky in the UK because we’re always overcompensating and cinema systems sometimes can be very slow to react kind of thing. Like the weather’s already on the turn, but the aircon is still on. It’s like this is not the vibe kind of thing. And I don’t know if anywhere tries to do like a 4DX style. We’re watching Law and Super Arabia, so let’s crank it a little bit.
Claire: You know, I was thinking about this for this pairing. I think it’d be nicer to watch Frogs if it was warm.
Paul: Yeah.
Claire: So maybe we’ll turn up the temp a bit. Moon, sky. So I definitely want the Earth to be full or partially full because it is eco-horror. So the kind of, I think the whole point is to reflect on the environment of Earth and the way in which we interact with it and treat it and to remind ourselves that we are part of the Earth. So moon, I mean, whoa. Earth has to be visible.
Paul: Full Earth.
Claire: Full Earth. Full Earth, if possible, obviously. And this is another one I was kind of going back and forth about, because I think it would be more interesting if it was like a daytime, it’s like, because it’s eco horror, but you’re on the moon. And Frogs is a very wet, hot, kind of swampy, warm film. It’s very bright. And so it’d be cool to watch it during the daytime, but, and so I really, my instinct is to say to do it during the day, but just the moviegoer in me, the cinephile in me wants it to be dark because then you can watch the movie better. Sure. You know.
Paul: Sure. Yeah, we’ve got to think about like, yeah, visibility of the screen here.
Claire: Exactly.
Paul: Yeah. Okay, well, it should be possible to have, I think you can have full moon, but still be on the dark side of full earth, but still be on the dark side of the moon kind of thing.
Claire: Yeah.
Paul: Because that part won’t change too much because the earth is in a fixed position with the moon kind of thing. So the moon isn’t necessarily rotating in that way. So you can pick a spot and just be in darkness, I think. Although there is still a sun rise and set on the moon. It just takes a month. So it shouldn’t be too much of an issue to keep it dark throughout the whole thing. All right, cool. Okay, so we have this. We have our dome. We have the earth sky, the moon sky. excuse me, how about the audience’s sort of experience? Tell me about, oh, tell me about how they find out about the screening. What’s their first experience? Because I always think the marketing of a thing is kind of like the first impression it kind of makes.
Claire: Yes, you know, it was very, you know, you really stumped me here because it’s very hard to think about how to market for a screening on the moon, in which you are kind of marketing to both earthlings and moon people. I hope they don’t get offended if I call the moon people, you know. I think moon people say Earthlings and moon people, yeah. So obvious, category H is like, we very classically are, we love a flyer. We love posters. So doing a bit of moon flyering, put the posters in some craters, some local craters. And obviously this is also catered towards earthlings. So, you know, on their ride up on their spaceship kind of. I mean, I think if we’re having earthlings coming up on a ship, it’s almost as easy marketing you can just kind of be like, here are the activities that are available to you on the moon. I’m sure there are tons of activities for earthlings who are spending a little holiday up on the moon, a little day trip. But it’s not like you can’t just wander around the moon. So I’m sure that there’s some pre-prepared activities. And so this would just be kind of part of the travel brochure, if you will, for just fun things to do on the moon.
Paul: I think one thing that’s really interesting to me, thinking about the materials you’ve produced for Category H as like publicity materials, the flyers and things, and thinking about the ones that, our other friends prepare as well, is I’m really, I really enjoy how kind of analog they feel. There’s a big sort of zen aesthetic, there’s a big sort of, you know, kind of nostalgic aesthetic as well. Some of them very modern. I’m thinking of your internet one as well, which I say modern, it was like modern to the 2000s, you know, kind of internet look. But I really liked how everything, even though, you know, most people use Canva everything looks like it’s been sort of cut out and assembled in these kind of like really textual kind of ways, which is a very beautiful response to like AI digital aesthetic that is so prevalent. I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone advertise their screening of an AI generation. Oh my gosh.
Claire: I’ve certainly seen some, been starting to see some art shows advertised that way.
Paul: Really? Yes. Oh no.
Claire: Yeah, disturbing.
Paul: Oh goodness.
Claire: Yeah, I mean, I just kind of the way that my brain works works is that I do tend to, especially if I’m stumped on a design or idea, I will print out a bunch of elements, stills I like or fonts I like, and then try to assemble them physically and then rescan them into a computer and edit it again. Yes, I do that for a lot of the posters. unless I really have a vision for one and I can do it all digitally. Just because it’s easier. But especially the goth season flyer, I drew it out and then I printed out bits and then I wrote out everything and then cut it all up and put it all together. And that’s probably one of the posters I’m most proud of. It was the teaser for the season, not the actual season announcement. But I guess I could do some moon. It would be interesting to kind of like if it’s earthlings, do a little like, attach a tiny little moon rock onto the little invite to come to see it.
Paul: Yes. Very bespoke.
Claire: Thank you. But I think I’m also very much aware. I know that horror is a specific audience and I have to deal with that in my everyday life where I am scary Claire: and so people will talk to you about horror movies or why they don’t like horror movies often I’m prompted but I I totally respect and understand people who do not enjoy horror movies. I know that imagery can be a lot. And it’s just not, some people just don’t like to feel that way when they’re experiencing film. Just because that’s my preferred way of watching movies. Being scared out of my mind doesn’t mean everyone likes that. So it would be hard. Obviously, we would want to canvas as much of the, you know, try to get as wide an audience as possible. But this is, I have decided to lean into my likes and intros. and do an eco horror double bill. So it will light as much as we’ll probably get a couple of random people. I think it will, for the most part, appeal to people who will want to watch horror movies on the moon.
Paul: Sure. You’ll make it clear that it’s a kind of horror experience. I mean, the vampire, I think, does a lot of speaking kind of thing.
Claire: Yes, yeah. It’s not and you know what’s funny is that one is that one’s not even scary in the traditional sense. I guess we’ll get into the films in a bit, but yeah, that one is it’s not even it’s only eco horror is a vampire, the way the vampire bat is horrific, it’s being, but the actual film is not horrific, Absolutely.
Paul: Okay, so we see your marketing, we sign up and we arrive at the venue. Now you always take such care with sort of dressing up the kind of venues that you have access to sort of create like a themed kind of thing. And I didn’t really put this together until I was preparing my notes for this. But we did recently see a documentary about haunted attractions called The Fright Stuff. You haven’t gone quite, you haven’t like had actors to the best of my knowledge at one of your things. But certainly there’s a haunt-esque quality to the way you dress up the, particularly the sort of downstairs. Oh no, actually yeah, the upstairs venue at the Rio as well. You had the Maypole for the recent sort of folk horror kind of double bill that you had there. So how would you adorn this clear, transparent dome on the moon.
Claire: This was another stumper for me, Paul: , if I’m being honest. I think that the whole point of this podcast is that you kind of have the setting already, right? And we want the setting to speak for itself and to interact with what we’re showing. But I I still was thinking about this. I mean, obviously I’m on the moon. Hopefully I would have a higher budget than just, having paper garlands everywhere and homemade bunting, which is usually what it is. But I think I would, like I said, I would want it to be kind of warmer in there because it’s like, it’s such like a warm movie, I think. And I honestly, I would put as much greenery in there as possible. I think like just like potted plants and maybe some green streamers. But I do want, I like the idea of kind of people watching, you know, frogs like taking over an island, snakes everywhere and tarantulas and it’s the whole point is that it’s like every frog specifically it’s like nature and so I think it’s just such a an interesting and fun contrast with the stark coldness of the moon. So maybe having it in the bubble, some plants, greenery, warm, will I think, against the backdrop of the moon, I think that could be interesting. But I wouldn’t go all out like I normally would at a category age late night or any clear screening that there is.
Paul: And we’ve seen actually, because I sent you something I found, which was a screening at the Music Box Theater in Chicago last year, I think, which included a live exotic animal demonstration by the Reptile Den, which is a curious little like addendum kind of added feature. As a programmer, how does that kind of thing?
Claire: To quote one of our favorite professors, the materiality of the film viewing experience. I thought about doing animal presentation for this screening, but we’re on the moon. I think it would be partially animal cruelty to ship a bunch of animals to the moon just to show them and then ship them back. It wouldn’t work. But if I if I had seen this advertised in my local area of going to see this animal, this live animal show before the movie Frogs, I would 1000% be there. That is so fun because it adds, once again, like I’ve said before, it’s like, I think eco horror is such a grounded and much more fascinating way of us kind of viewing our environment than the straightforward like environmental documentaries that are also popular because it’s bringing these animals like know like these animals are, they’re maybe not all sentient. Like I’m not going to say that about every bug out there, but seeing them and experiencing them and touching them and that reminds you that, we’re on the planet with these animals, and we need to protect the planet.
Paul: When you consider the ways in which both films are encouraging us to look at animals and sort of consider them, which we’ll come to. We’ll come to the films very shortly. But first of all, more importantly, food and drink. What is available snack wise?
Claire: You know, this was the biggest comfort actually, Paul: . I know I’m saying about every question. I’m just like, it is, this is such a great idea for a podcast because it genuinely is very hard to think about programming outside of Earth. And, I do love a themed cocktail and, I think that would be best would be some sort of like swamp, green cocktail that’s kind of thick and, maybe some like peach juice in there, maybe some mint leaves, kind of, I was thinking of specifically like a peach mojito type vibe. which I’ve made before and that’s one of my favorite drinks. Because it’s kind of, it’s very refreshing. It’s very summery, but it also looks like it could be a swamp in a glass. So that would be the cocktail.
Paul: Also, the closer you get to a mint tulip as possible, the more appropriate Ray Milan’s accent becomes. Exactly.
Claire: Yes. And food, I actually didn’t think about food. I think I would, because, like I said, I’m usually programming in a traditional venue where there’s, where I make up a drink and then the food that’s available is popcorn. So, what’s a screen on the moon without popcorn, I guess. I would, ideally have a bunch of different flavors that you can, like, the different, like salts and stuff to put on, different flavors, like a little bit of ranch or whatever. But that is has nothing to do with the film. That’s just my personal preference.
Paul: We’re not dying it green or anything.
Claire: No, you know, I was talking about this yesterday, actually, about one of my first summer of working in a cinema of my life was Barbenheimer Summer. And a big task that I had very early on was how do we make popcorn pink? Wow. And we did all these experiments. Obviously, easiest and most straightforward route is to use red food dye in the popcorn making process. But fun fact, most red food dye has bugs in it.
Paul: Oh, okay.
Claire: Yes.
Paul: Right.
Claire: So it therefore would have made our popcorn not vegan so we couldn’t sell it because that’s like one of the things at my job. So we couldn’t use red food dye. So and I tried to get like, you know, more organic food dye didn’t really work, you know, and then you’re trying different things like put it in the it afterwards, so we’d get edible glitter. And the thing that worked the best, truly, genuinely, what worked the best was we got beet juice and beet powder. And then it made the popcorn pink. But then it made the popcorn taste like beets. No one wants beet popcorn.
Paul: Salty or sweet? I’ll have beet. Beet please.
Claire: Especially watching Barbie, it just. wasn’t going to work. So I have that kind of traumatic experience of trying to make popcorn pink. Actually, listeners, if anyone knows how to make popcorn pink in an easier way, let me know.
Paul: When the Barbie expanded universe kicks off, we’re going to keep needing this. It’s nothing compared to the uranium flavored ones you had to do for the Oppenheimer screening following it. This is not what you expect when you sign up for working in a cinema. It’s now how do you make popcorn pink?
Claire: Yeah. And it was fun, but I couldn’t I wouldn’t even know where to start to try to make popcorn green that also would be an appealing green and not a gnarly green.
Paul: Yeah.
Claire: Maybe, honestly, maybe like a little seaweed flavoring. Like I think that might, it would make it green and taste like earthy, not earth, taste like the ocean, but what I mean. That could be interesting. But once again, it doesn’t really have anything to do with the films.
Paul: Both movies like have, I guess it’s fresh water, probably in both cases, but if they have like a water kind of connection between them, in spite of the second ostensibly, well, apart from the first one ostensibly being about a bat, we sort of start underwater with these weird sea creatures.
Claire: Yeah, we do, we do. maybe that would work. I guess I have to go back to the drawing board, do some more experimenting with different colored popcorns.
Paul: I’m gonna use this as an opportunity to… Say something to you I don’t think I have before, which is that category H I think has Ludovico treated me out of being able to eat popcorn. Really? Because I go to category H and I love them. They’re incredible. It’s a brilliant time. I am often quite sleepy, especially by the end. And I think the first few times you had these big things of popcorn that you would give us something. And so I do now associate the sensation of being really sleepy with the taste of popcorn.
Claire: That’s amazing.
Paul: It’s like linked in my head forever now. I’m like Alex the Large from Clockwork Orange reaching up at a popcorn fan like, God.
Claire: That’s so interesting. I’ve never thought of, because I’ve worked in a cinema now for 3 1/2 years, I still like obsessively eat popcorn, but much less than I used to. And I can’t, I honestly can’t eat popcorn outside of work. Like if I go to another cinema, I will not get popcorn. If I’m at home, I will not eat popcorn. I actually, the first statement I just said may be a bit of a fib because I, if there’s like a fancy like gourmet, like I think I went to, I was picture House Central and they to see the Odyssey. And they had gourmet popcorn that had, it was like apple and like toffee flavored. And I did get that because I can’t get that at work. But in general, I’m like, I eat so much popcorn and then you get one piece in your tooth and then it stays there for a few days and then it’s like, and that’s happened to me so it’s such a regular occurrence in my life and it sucks. So I just like can’t eat popcorn for fun anymore. I just associate it with work.
Paul: It is interesting how it’s become the de facto kind of movie sort of snack and it is inseparable from it. The shareability of it is nice, but it is messy. Some always comes off from every handful. People end up with it all over themselves. And if it gets dropped, it’s a nightmare for cinema workers. Like, I mean, my God, when I leave a screening and I look around me at what other people have done, I just think that’s horrific.
Claire: But I will, on the reverse of everything you just said.
Paul: And it’s noisy.
Claire: It’s shareable. It’s noisy, but it’s not as, if you compare popcorn to every other snack you could be eating in the cinema, crisps, you know, like, or any, there’s most snacks that you would eat at a cinema are crunchy and loud. Popcorn is not as loud as it could be. And when it falls, it’s actually so, it’s easier to clean than most things. It’s just kind of like, you just sweep it up. Candy is terrible. Like if we have kids, we are like, no candy is allowed. No, like pastries or all of that gets really trapped in the carpet and it’s hard to clean up. And any, yeah, any chocolate, it’s like, if that is like melting and like, you know, out of all of the cinema snacks, I would prefer to spend an hour sweeping popcorn than any other snack or food in a movie theater.
Paul: I hadn’t thought of that because if you step on popcorn, it’s just going to shatter. You step on like a minstrel or something or like an M&M, it’s going to mush.
Claire: Yes, exactly.
Paul: Into the carpet.
Claire: And crisps, like if you’re eating like, or chips if you’re American, those crumbs are so tiny and they’re kind of oily. So it’s harder to get out of the carpet as well. Like you’re more likely to have to need a vacuum to get it up than just the simple broom. Yeah. This has been popcorn talk. Love it.
Paul: Okay.
Claire: I could talk about popcorn for hours, but that’s not why we’re here, Paul: .
Paul: But popcorn shall be available.
Claire: Popcorn will be available. Maybe some other snacks, but I’m good with popcorn as a cinema worker.
Paul: Popcorn is vegan, so like is a good thing to serve when you’re doing like, you know, something in celebration of that.
Claire: And it’s easy to ship to the moon as well. It’s like 3 ingredients. maybe 4?
Paul: I was wondering if atmospheric pressure is going to affect the ability to pop popcorn. We can always pre-pop.
Claire: I don’t know if it’s the pressure because it’s mostly about the heat that you need, right? It’s oil and corn and either salt or sugar and heat. So I don’t know. I’ve never tried to cook anything on the moon, so I don’t know. Couldn’t tell you.
Paul: All sorts of barriers. We’re going to have to find out on the day. But for now, let’s get to the movies themselves. So we should say that The Vampire is an 8 minute long sort of film. I believe Frogs is something like 100 minutes, something like that.
Claire: Yeah, around that. Yeah.
Paul: Around that. So are you going to play consecutively one going straight into the other?
Claire: Yes. I think that if it was a true double bill with like 2 features, I would have more of a break. But It’s just, it’s a short, it’s only 8 minutes. I think disrupting it, having a pause, a longer break in between that, it would just kind of disrupt the flow. So I would introduce both at once. Yeah. And I would kind of just discuss the same things I’ve already been basically talking about in eco horror and the way in which we interact with nature and how much I love nature and the environment and earth and some takeaways that I hope the audience will have about how we treat our world. And for the moon people that I hope that this kind of makes them want to visit Earth or, makes them, which actually I don’t think frogs would make anyone want to visit Earth. That’s not a very good, doesn’t make the human population look very good.
Paul: That’s true.
Claire: Yeah.
Paul: You can come remind yourselves of how good the animals are.
Claire: Exactly, yes. Yeah, that’s kind of, you know, when you don’t get any animals, so, you know, getting to see I mean, I’m sure you interact with people a lot, but not animals.
Paul: So, yeah, absolutely. I mean, I will say I hadn’t seen either of these films before.
Claire: Really? I’m always, I love it when I see a film when you have. because you’ve seen so many.
Paul: I’ve seen quite a few films at this stage. But no, I haven’t seen either. And so I double billed them last night. Yeah, and really, first of all, I mean, the first thing that occurred to me about Le Vampier is just the style of it. I really enjoyed the sort of stochastic French speaking kind of over this really fascinating footage. But it has this kind of camp quality, the octopus with the skull just talking about how deadly some of these animals are. I guess in describing the form a little bit, it’s just, it’s largely sort of nature footage with this French narration and a Duke Ellington, what I’m delighted to see is referred to as hot jazz score, complete with a really sleazy sounding plunger mute that makes that sort of curved sound, which, yeah, love that. It’s a really fascinating short film.
Claire: Yes, it’s very, it’s very, like tonally it’s very weird because there’s a lot of quips and like the way that it’s written, you’re kind of like, whoa, that’s a funny way to put that. And it’s, you are, you know, essentially watching a bat eat another animal like on screen. And it’s really freaky, but it’s still kind of fun and funny. And it is just what nature is. It is like, I always struggle with the idea of like showing footage of like animals being hurt or whatever, but it’s quite literally, it’s just how nature works in this. And it is very like humbling in that way. And then I think it’s just really cool because I don’t think I’ve ever seen a documentary like that before. I know about bats, but it’s, I don’t know that much. You don’t like, you don’t see like that up close of the way in which a vampire bat like will eat a guinea pig’s face. Yeah. And just how it kind of, you know, that’s where, you know, the myth of this vampire, like, you know, the name of the vampire and how this animal has affected the myth of the vampire and how the myth of the vampire created the name for the animal and how they kind of are and we associate this mythological creature with this real life creature still to this day. Yeah, and I just cited, I love vampires as well, so I find it really fascinating.
Paul: Yeah, I mean, it’s really playful in its style. Having the music and having this kind of, you know, also putting in Nosferatu, like a couple of frames of that kind of movie, kind of really, it makes it a very sort of interesting and kind of essayistic kind of approach to this material, which I think is really interesting.
Claire: Yes.
Paul: Would you warn audiences about the cute little guinea pig getting preyed upon and one shot of a pretty gnarled up looking horse?
Claire: Yeah, there is. I forgot about that. You’re right. I just rewatched the film. I watched that one today and then I skimmed through frogs because I haven’t watched in probably a year. But I didn’t have enough time to watch the full thing. Yes, I would warn. I actually, there’s a possibility I may be showing that film in the near future. I’ve been approached by another programmer who asked me what I would, what a vampire, what short film I would bring to a vampire ball would be. And I was like, boy, do I have a short for you. So I have been thinking about this So I would warn, I mean, it’s interesting that like the way the vampire bat works, like the way that they suck blood. It’s like, it is almost humane where it’s like its saliva numbs its victim. And you have to say it in the documentary, like, and if the animal is asleep, then it won’t even wake up. Like it’s painless. And the guinea pig doesn’t die. It’s just like the bat kind of sucks a lot of its blood out. And it was also interesting having, even though you see that happening, a lot of the explanation of it, you see it’s the bat is like drinking water or something else. And the way, like that’s how they’re able to get really close up with how its mouth works and its tongue works. I also, the bat is also so cute. Like, it’s like, oh, it’s so nasty, it’s sucking the cute guinea pig, but it’s also really cute and that’s how it’s, what it needs to survive. You know, it’s animal kingdom, baby.
Paul: Yeah, and the guinea pig doesn’t seem too perturbed. The narrator assures us only afterwards that, you know, the guinea pig’s gonna be fine kind of thing. So yeah, it’s like weirdly transactional. But then he goes on to talk about how the real threat comes from disease kind of thing.
Claire: Yeah, like rabies and everything, yeah.
Paul: You told me your picks for the film a little over 24 hours before we started recording, which did give me enough time to watch both and also just enough time to get to the BFI and check out James Leo Cahill’s Zoological Surrealism, the non-human cinema of Jean Penne-Levy.
Claire: My God, Paul…
Paul: Specifically, chapter 4, substitutes vectors and the circulatory systems of modernity, which is the chapter that kind of covers both that film and Dr. Normat Serum, experimental treatment of a hemorrhage in a dog, which looks less catchy on a poster, I think. bit more of a mouthful. To give you a little sample of the chapter, the analogical processes of anthropomorphism function by means of projective assignation. The observer projects a set of purportedly known human qualities onto an animal, object, or non-human entity, but anthropomorphism also has a metamorphic potential. It may deform the human during the projecting as much as it makes the animals it incorporates conform to anthropocentric perspectives. The metamorphic qualities of anthropomorphism generate Copernican orientation that place humans within a broader ecological context. It was a page turner.
Claire: Wow.
Paul: It was actually really fascinating. There’s 2 letters that I would love to bring to your attention about the making of this film. The first is from way before it was made or shot. It’s from 1934 and it’s a letter from the director, Pan LaVey, to Alfred Stossel, the director of the Institute for Popular Natural History in Berlin. And he just writes, I am now going to begin a very long study of the blood of animals and men. I do not know the outcome. Just said with such five-year-old confidence, you know, I’m now going to begin. No study came of that except for, you know, the films that we’ve now seen. But the other letter, and I love this just because it gives such an impression of this man’s life, and I would love to live it, but I think you have to become an expert in a field. You will live this life in some way at some stage. The letter is from Emil Robard, an expert in blood-borne pathogens and insect vectors in French colonial Africa, to Panleve telling him that he has a rare and curious creature in his laboratory that’s just arrived, a South American vampire bat. And he wrote, this is the first time in France that one can directly study the vampire’s customary methods of sucking an attack. The animal in our possession is very docile. The department is eager to have a cinematographic recording of the comportment of the vampire encountering a guinea pig or a rabbit. Since our micro cinemagraphic department is not equipped for such a production, I thought that perhaps it would be possible for you to take some footage of this subject. In this case, we could be at your disposal in the morning between 10 and noon, primarily in order to introduce you to the animal so that you can judge for yourself whether it is possible to do this. Just come by the lab, 10 and noon, meet the bat, see if there’s chemistry, do a screen test.
Claire: That’s so cool, I didn’t know that actually.
Paul: I really love that. But yeah, apparently the bat That was filmed before the war in 1939, but then when war broke out, the scientists were afraid that the bat would get freed in a bomb and a bombing and escape and spread disease, and so they euthanized it, unfortunately. So the bat you see in the movie did not live long afterwards, which is, yeah, but Pan Levy himself was kind of awesome during the war. He was a part of the resistance, including apparently using scuba gear to collect and distribute intelligence along the French-Spanish border.
Claire: That’s so cool.
Paul: Inconvenient but I kind of love it like the allies have to like or the rest of the resistance have to get their scuba gear and like dive and find the intelligence he’s hidden.
Claire: That’s so cool.
Paul: He was captured several times and was saved from execution when a friend of his raided the prison he was being kept in. He was involved in the Committee for the Liberation of French Cinema, the CLCF, ****** name. I just love the fact that during the war, it’s like, yeah, sure, we’ve got to, you know, take out the enemy planes and tanks and stuff, but also we need to save cinema. Absolutely. And then after the war, he was placed in a leadership position in the CLCF and was made director of French cinema, director of French cinema in 1944, a role he held for nine months during which he aimed to recreate true cinema, which had been practically abolished since the talkie. So technically and formally adventurous. And you kind of see that although there is like this narration, there is very much a sort of interest in image and music.
Claire: Yes, yeah, I’ve seen a couple of his other films. specifically the one that stuck with me is the seahorse one. I think he just really liked seahorses as well. But I just love that at his core, he’s just like kind of a guy who loves animals and just wants to film them. And he kind of incorporated that into into cinema. Like, he’s like, that’s just so cool, actually. I didn’t know all that about him.
Paul: He seems to be an interesting guy and had a wide variety of interests because one other fabulous throwaway fact right in the middle of a paragraph with nothing else said about it is Cahill quotes Oliver Gakin’s comparison of the film with a cabinet of curiosity, specifically the one found in Jean Vigo’s Atlant. There’s a moment where that is. And here’s the quote, for which, the film, Pan LaVey furnished a jar of severed hands.
Claire: Sounds like my kind of guy.
Paul: Like if you’re making a movie and you need a jar of severed hands, who are you going to call?
Claire: I need one of those for category H, my God, yeah.
Paul: One of the best set dressings yet. Okay, one last quote from this. Right, there’s a moment where it talks about its heterogeneous structure, the film, The Vampire, revives the program format of an earlier mode of cinema as well as the use of the movie theater as an analogical machine wherein the different film texts, i.e. like the the different film stock footage of various animals and Nosferatu blur and contaminate each other, maintaining their sense of stylistic variety whilst also accruing a shared significance and overlap by virtue of being shown together. And then we cut to frogs. Wow. I really like that. It’s just like.
Claire: That’s a good quote.
Paul: Yeah. That’s such a beautiful way of looking at programming in general and double features and yeah, assembling things.
Claire: Yeah, and just essayistic films in general, like I have that, like the best essay films take so many different bits and kind of mash them together to make, not mash, but you know, put them together to create a new kind of narrative and aesthetic. Yeah, great. Fascinating.
Paul: So as the audience has watched Levampia and it kind of ends with its kind of jazzy sort of thing. We’re in a pond. We have the memories of like weird little water critters from the previous film kind of floating around and then cut to a frog, freeze the title card and that noise and frogs. I just think, I just, I know that would get a laugh.
Claire: Yes. I think that I really, the reason, partially why I picked these films, I think I actually thought of the vampire first because just in terms of aesthetics of the moon, I really wanted to do a black and white film. which you kind of brought up what you would pick. And I think I kind of was thinking about that. And I wanted to do some sort of animal thing. And then frogs came to my mind because I love frogs. But I think that tonally, I think that the vampire is so like, it’s offbeat, but it is still a serious, it’s a documentary, right? It’s like, it’s docu footage of an animal, like in its regular environment, just acting the way that it always does. And then to cut to this very goofy eco horror, I just, I love that. I think that it’s, I’m actually quite proud of that little bit of programming because I think it is like a nice tone shift that would get people, get the people going. Yeah.
Paul: I feel like Pam LaVey would also like approve of that based on the way that the vampire is kind of struck and with the hot jazz. I think he’d love a smash cut into like a grindhouse kind of piece of eco horror. Yes. So another bit of like interaction between film and setting that occurs to me is very early on you’ve got Sam Elliott’s sans mustache.
Claire: Sans mustache. It’s kind of weird.
Paul: It’s weird.
Claire: It just doesn’t look like him at all. It’s like his whole.
Paul: Voice is different when he’s not trying to talk through a mustache. And he’s out there, he’s paddling around, he’s taking his pictures. It’s all very good. And we do have the title card, but then it gets a bit serene again. And then that gets interrupted by this big monstrous speedboat that kind of tears through the scene and represents the arrival of our rich characters, the characters who are sort of taking nature for granted and trying to manipulate it and are patient to shape nature to their convenience because they want to get rid of all the frogs because it keeps them up at night. So this big monstrous boat comes tearing through emblematic of like man’s hubris. And we’re watching this in a big moon base. A big dome kind of thing here on this. previously untouched landscape. Yes.
Claire: Oh, so true. I actually, I mean, even before the boat arrives, it is, it’s this kind of serene, you got a lot of shots of the animals and then you start to get shots of, you know, pollution. And that’s Sam Elliot noticing all of the trash in the lake. And it’s kind of mixed in with these shots of animals. And I think it’s just as an opening, it’s really effective because then it’s, then the speedboat comes and it really, it’s like, it sets where kind of the setting is set, and then immediate action into, okay, we know exactly what this movie is going to be about, where it’s going to go. But that’s an interesting thought. Yeah, man’s hubris.
Paul: Yeah. Well, let’s hope, let’s hope that doesn’t become our enduring human.
Claire: Like you said earlier, it’s the, you know, if we keep treating our planet like trash, like we are going to have to go to the moon, you know, because we will make it inhabitable and then we won’t have any of these animals up there, you know?
Paul: Plan, right? After trashing the planet is like.
Claire: Just go to another planet.
Paul: Go to another planet and try and trash that. Yeah, gross. It is gross. But like what’s interesting is watching all of the, because throughout the early stages of the movie in particular, all our characters are always being watched by like all of these animals. And now thanks to Le Vampire, we’re thinking about, you know, the danger that animals kind of hold and the kind of, you know, secrets that they have. Because beyond the vampire bat, he always says, you know, all these animals have like, he like tries to to make them a little alien kind of thing, like with their articulated limbs and stuff. Yeah, encourages to sort of see the threat kind of within nature, which is then still in the audience’s mind as they’re watching frogs.
Claire: Yes, which frogs, I mean, I think it’s much more of like a, because it’s a nature fights back narrative, the animals are maybe a little more sentient than they would normally be. But that’s why I also like the pairing is because watching the vampire bat be in its normal natural environment and then this, all these other animals in their environment, not necessarily behaving the way that they would, but I think it’s also a really interesting contrast to be like, how are we treating them and how are they, and how are we shaping their behaviors? Absolutely.
Paul: And also another point of comparison there is because yeah, these people on this island feel like they have just this outrageous kind of right to shape nature accordingly. And then maybe you’re thinking about the first film and the circumstances of its making and how the director has captured nature and sort of, you know, intrude it a little bit. And we don’t know the extent to which there is manipulation. I mean, through the book, I know that, you know, the Pasteur Institute kind of, you know, had this bat and they kind of constructed this encounter between the bat and the guinea pigs. So they’re kind of manipulating things a little bit too for the purposes of observation kind of thing. And meanwhile, Elliot’s presentation into the film. Sam Liat’s the presentation into the film. He’s got his camera, so he is observing and sort of documenting, and that’s a somewhat benign interaction with nature. He’s not necessarily detracting from it by being out there with his little camera and his non-motorized boat.
Claire: Yeah, He’s the good guy, you know, he’s the hero. He’s not manipulating nature, he’s one with nature, and he’s documenting nature.
Paul: Not a very gory film, but it’s very, it’s fun to sort of see how the next death is going to come.
Claire: Yeah, it is like, It’s almost like final destination ask where everyone’s going to die. And if they’re all going to die from different, I find, what I find so fun about frogs is that it’s not just frogs. It’s like every kind of swamp creature. Yeah, it’s snakes and it’s spiders and it’s I remember recommending this to a few people, being like, it’s just a catch-all for eco-horror because it’s like you can get basically any creepy crawly swamp thing, alligators, like anything that you’re afraid of, and it’s in this movie. It is a little bit of a political, not political, but it’s like a, it is a rich family and it is the 4th of July and it’s this like rich, terrible, awful patriarch’s birthday on the 4th of July who wants everything his way. And so I, calling back to what you were mentioning about the hubris of, man’s hubris of being on the moon, it’s very much kind of an eat the rich narrative and not just they, just a straightforward like eco horror, which I think is really interesting and, interesting to say in this day and age, because as we know, it is a top down issue where, it’s big companies and big, these big institutionalized like things that are acting against our environment that are affecting us every day coming out of the hottest summer we’ve ever had and in an active drought right now. And it affects us, but in a way that it’s kind of harder for us to fight against or even see, because it’s climate change. It’s just happening gradually. So, eat the rich and save the planet.
Paul: Absolutely. Never a more timely message. And I mean, it also, because one of the things I moved past in the Cahill sort of description of Le Vampier is the historical context. Because, you know, it was shot in 1939, released in 45 after liberation.
Claire: Right.
Paul: You know, and the way it talks about disease and parasitic relationships and the spreading of disease. Basically, he’s writing and saying that people would have understood at the time that this is sort of, swipes at fascism, not just fascism, but also the colonialism of the French Third Republic.
Claire: Yeah.
Paul: And that plays into Thomas Alsace’s reading of Nosferatu, which is the same, like with all the rats kind of flooding in, sort of being, you know, emblematic of fascism. So yeah, both films sort of barbed politics kind of there, although maybe a little a little harder to see for a modern audience in La Vampire.
Claire: Yeah, And Frogs, you know, it’s coming at the curve of like, of the kind of renaissance of eco horror films of the 70s because of the environmentalist movement that started in the 70s. There is, you know, there’s other films that came out in that decade, like Prophecy or like, there’s just, there is kind of this, yeah, influx of these films. And part of it is, it’s the environmentalist movement and this kind of, almost like Native American or just Native in general kind of notion that we need to be working with the, like we are nature. We’re not outside of, as humans, we don’t sit outside of nature, we are nature. And so we can’t, we have to stop trying to control it and fighting against it and work with it. And you know, this idea of like reciprocity and what we are taking from the earth, we need to give back to the earth. So this I think is also very much prevalent on the minds of people in the 70s because it’s like, this is kind of the conversation. And while we’ve had kind of other waves of environmentalism over the years, that was kind of the really, really big one. And so I’m hoping that we kind of get back to that because people just don’t think about that anymore. And Ecohorror is not as in style. I mean, I think that Ecohorror now is in a really interesting place because we have new things to be scared about besides, oh, I littered and it’s going to end up in a swamp and all the frogs are going to eat me. Now it’s a little more, an example that I love is Crimes of the Future, the Cronenberg film. While it’s not the main plot, a side plot of that film is that humans have had to grow an extra, we’ve had to evolve to have an extra organ that will digest plastic because we have so much plastic in our environment. And that concept, that idea is so horrifying. And that wasn’t even a thought in the 70s. But, it’s like we gotta, it’s like, we have to have some more extreme thinking and fears need to be more prevalent in order to enact some sort of change or consciousness around, the planet. There’s almost no bouncing back at this point. It’s like you have to have an active part in helping our planet to reverse the damage that we’ve already done. Because it’s not, there’s this kind of, which you’ve heard me talk about before, There’s, especially in the pandemic, there was just kind of notion of, if we just all stay inside and we do nothing, like nature will heal itself. Nature is healing. It’s kind of a meme. Like everyone says it, everyone knows that phrase. And it’s true that nature can heal itself to a point, but like, us all doing nothing and going inside did not mean that, wasn’t good for our planet. We increased our internet usage. We increased the need for data centers. We increased, you know, it’s, we increased, you know, indoor, the things that we need when we’re inside, you know, electricity. And it’s just this kind of like, It’s that like, oh no, we can’t just do nothing is the thing. It’s not gonna, it’s not, the problems are going away and it’s not, we can’t help ourselves.
Paul: This is fabulous because it exactly segues into, so 24 hours notice, I got to the BFI library. I did manage to get my hands on a copy of Animal Horror Cinema, Genre History and Criticism, edited by Kay Gregersdotter and was able to skim read, very much skim read, Jennifer Schell’s chapter, Polluting and Perverting Nature, the Vengeful Animals of Frogs. Love this. But Shell argues that the environmental politics of the film are more complicated and potentially, potentially more conservative than they appear because she contextualizes the film in the wake of Rachel Carson’s 1962 book, Silent Spring, which apparently was about pesticides getting into the ecosystem. Apparently everybody read it and was freaked out on it. Her argument is that the film suggests that nature will correct human environmental destruction by itself. And as Sam Elliot’s character kind of says regarding the excess frogs, they’ll die off by next year kind of thing. And so, you know, humans need to be bumped off to put nature back the way it is. And suggesting that nature is self-regulating. And so the film could be seen as optimistic, but also potentially just a kind of, I guess, an environmental fantasy that nature might be able to defend itself against us. which unfortunately, as we’re seeing it, can’t. Unfortunately, frogs haven’t come and wiped out the data center yet.
Claire: Yeah, yet, yet. I’m assembling an army.
Paul: Let’s radicalize the frogs and be their friends.
Claire: So I totally agree with that. However, I think that, I guess the point of eco horror, this is like you’re putting this fear in front, like you’re being confronted with this fear of, yeah, what if nature fights back. And we know that it won’t really, logically, like we, it kind of does, shark, there are plenty of things in nature that we fear as humans because there are predators out there. are like, we are, I think a little bit afraid because there’s, it’s the unknown. Nature does, it is gonna do what it’s gonna do. Like we all know that, we all know it. But It’s being confronted with that. And then the notion of, no, we have to change. I need to change. I can’t. Why are the animals mad? It’s because of my actions of, you know, not recycling or not doing this. And so I mean, obviously it’s not just me. It’s on the individual level, I think, if we’re talking as a movie going individual experience, you are thinking about how you interact with the environment when you’re watching eco horror. And so that in that sense, that’s why I love eco horror. But I do agree with that statement that it’s it is it does perpetuate that idea that nature will heal itself, which we know it won’t. It just won’t. Like, I mean, it will, but in a way that there will be an ice age and wipe everyone off the planet and kill the human race and then restart again. Like, because that does happen every, you know, every once in a while.
Paul: Depending on what we classify as nature, I guess, the idea is that nature endures. That kind of thing.
Claire: It endures and it changes, but it will outlast us as a human race, I think, unless we do make it to the moon and we do it, we do colonize the We’ll mess that up. We’ll mess it up. We always will. I really like that quote, actually. I want to read that.
Paul: I want to properly read it.
Claire: Yeah, like I said, a lot of eco-horror has that kind, especially from the 70s, it’s that vibe. Like Prophecy, it’s like a, I think it’s a paper company, correct me if I’m wrong. You can check that, polluting the environment. Then there’s this like mutated bear, like inside out bear that is really nasty. And there’s all these like other like environmental mutations. because we’re accelerating mutations in the environment through chemicals, man-made chemicals, and misuse. putting them, just putting them on the environment. And a lot, a lot of eco horror has that exact same sentiment. But like I said, I think that there’s, it’s not, that is just one strand of eco horror. There’s lots of other things to be scared of in the way that we treat our environment. Yeah.
Paul: Well, I think the last thing to talk about then, and again, we don’t want to give away the ending because we hope people will see frogs. Come and see frogs. Come and see frogs on the moon. Come on, this is all a publicity thing for fantasy screens. Sign up now. In terms of the walkout, I’m interested because again, without spoiling it, but we get this kind of like synthy kind of noises and then credits and over the credits we have something that’s kind of I think fun. It’s a bit camp. And then finally a stinger that’s kind of a bit fun. Yeah. So like, do you think about what people will be walking out to? Obviously you wouldn’t necessarily select a film on this basis, but do you think about what the walkout is going to be like?
Claire: Yeah, I mean, you’re always thinking about, you’re hoping as a film programmer, you’re hoping that people, that you’re showing people art that makes you think, that makes them think or that they’re gonna not just forget immediately. And I think Frogs is a film that I saw years ago that really stuck with me. Same with The Vampire. So it’s hopefully with like combination of like an introduction of like kind of setting up how you should be thinking about it and then people walking away. Hopefully it, you know, has this kind of response that I would like, you know, you’re walking away to be in a barren landscape. So you’re kind of once and you’re So you’re being confronted with, well, that the earth is the beauty of it. Like, how that is the entire thing right there in front of your face in the sky to see. And it’s gorgeous and it’s colorful and it’s our home. And then you’re on the barren tundra that is the alternative if we fuck up this planet. You know, it’s I love the moon. Shout out moon. I’m not trying to call her barren.
Paul: We’re not shading the moon here.
Claire: The idea that kind of the colonized this colonized space and Star Wars idea that we’re going to in the very or long, I was going to say in the future, but we all know it’s a long time ago that even though we are our technology is advancing and it’s really cool and interesting that it’s advancing and like this kind of final frontier of space is fascinating and unexplored. Earth is our home. There’s no duplicating that. There may be other planets that are similar, but we are products of this environment. We are products of millions of years of evolution to then be in a place where we can get beyond that. But we need to still preserve it and take care of it and be safe. And where we’re at right now, we’re not in space right now. We still need to We need to protect her. So I hope that people are kind of confronted with that in a way that’s not, me just showing an inconvenient truth, right? And, our planet Earth, it’s, a funny little eco-horror frog movie where the ending has a really funny image. I’m not talking to spoiler, it’s the image on the cover, but on the poster. But it is kind of, it leaves you with a chuckle and then it kind of makes you think. And that’s That’s my hope for it. And that’s, yeah, that would be my hope if I ever were to screen it, even on this planet, Incredible.
Paul: Well, back to Earth, “Scary Claire” Harrison. How can people find out about what you’re up to and what you’re doing?
Claire: Yeah, so you can follow me on Instagram. It’s Scary Claire; I think it’s at Clairrrison with three R’s, but Scary Claire, Category H is my late-night horror film club that I program with my best friend. We’re mostly at the Rio Cinema, but we do other traditional and non-traditional. It’s all late nights, it’s all double bills, and it’s usually entirely themed gimmick events that we put a lot of work into. So you can follow us at Category H Films on Instagram. Plug for the Rio Cinema because it’s the greatest movie theatre on the planet. It is my home away from home. It is the place that I am at more than I am in my bed. And it’s got some of the best programming because it’s got such a varied program. Everyone at the Rio kind of programs and has the freedom to pitch things. And it therefore makes for an extremely diverse program and films that I never heard of or never would have encountered in my real life are being introduced by my Polish coworkers or my old gay coworkers. Shout out to my old gay coworkers. But anyway, come to the Rio Cinema. It’s celebrating its 50th year this year, of being a community space. So it’s actually one of the longest-running cinemas in the country. So it has been open since 1909, but 50 years of being a non-profit community-run space. And there’s tons of really awesome events, but checking it out. Follow the Rio on Instagram, sign up for the newsletter, you know, all that stuff. Yeah, that’s it.
Paul: Thank you so much.
Claire: Thank you, Paul. This has been so much fun. First podcast ever. Oh my goodness.
Paul: Thank you for listening to one good, I mean fantasy screens. Fantasy screens. My guest today was Claire Harrison. Our theme was composed by Jacob Blundell. Our key art for the season is by Ukraine. Our key art for the season is by Ukrainian illustrator Olena Rogers. You can find her on Fiverr. We are a Screen Mayhem podcast. You can find us on Instagram at Screen Mayhem, also on Twitter in the same way. And that’s it. Do we need TikTok? I hope not. I hope we don’t. Tune in next time for our next lunar screening. Ta ra, luv!