By MICHAEL GINGOLD
As Glass Eye Pix celebrates its 40th anniversary this week, the bastion of independent genre storytelling has relaunched one of its perennial projects. Last week, we broke the news that the horror audio series TALES FROM BEYOND THE PALE is coming back for its sixth season; below, Glass Eye founder/filmmaker Larry Fessenden talks about that return and how it came to happen.
TALES FROM BEYOND THE PALE was launched by Fessenden and co-creator Glenn McQuaid (director of I SELL THE DEAD and the new THE RESTORATION OF GRAYSON MANOR) in 2010, to recapture the thrills and terror of old-style radio shows. Over the course of five seasons and 49 episodes (check ’em out here), TALES has showcased a wide range of horror talent as writers and actors, with a number of the episodes recorded live at festivals and other public events. Then the series encountered an unexpected interruption, as Fessenden relates…
After several years on hiatus, what led to TALES coming back this year?
TALES takes a lot of effort, and Glenn and I worked on it quite regularly for 10 years. Then–and I hate blaming COVID for everything, but it did put a damper on both live shows and studio recordings–that momentum slowed. We did do a 10th-anniversary quarantine Zoom with many of our regular collaborators on October 27, 2020 (see it below).
After the pandemic, Glenn had a movie [RESTORATION] to make and had to focus on that, and I had some films to mount as well, so TALES moved to the back burner. We had updated it to a podcast format, so we felt it was safe for fans to discover in our absence. The only Tale we recorded in the early ’20s was a reading by [Glass Eye regular] John Speredakos of Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Masque of the Red Death” with a sax score by myself. But that was an outlier, because to our mind, the TALES brand has always been about original work. The other exception was an adaptation of H.P. Lovecraft’s “The Hound” by Stuart Gordon. It’s hard to refuse Stuart Gordon!
What was the selection process for the new season of stories?
Our process is fairly deliberate. We approach people we’ve worked with over time who haven’t had a go at it before, like Jenn Wexler [THE RANGER, THE SACRIFICE GAME], who had produced a couple of seasons but never written for us. Or new artisans we might have just worked, with like Emily Bennett [his co-star in the new BLOOD SHINE]. Ted Geoghegan [who directed Fessenden in WE ARE STILL HERE and BROOKLYN 45] had written a Tale years ago that didn’t get made, so it was fun to bring him back. We tend to revisit writers as well, like Joe Maggio, Graham Reznick, April Snellings and Clay McLeod Chapman. Between us, we have a wide circle of horror pals to prod and new people to approach.
I will say it is also curated; even from our pals, we’ll ask for several loglines before deciding, so the season has a rhythm–an old-fashioned creature feature butted up against an AI apocalypse story. Glenn and I have to feel inspired. I don’t believe in making work for the sake of creating content. Life’s too short and the purse strings too tight for that.
Is there any talent involved that you’ve wanted to get for a long time?
The format is such that you can easily imagine getting writers or actors of stature to commit to a short-form project or a couple hours of recording. But there are always logistics in show biz, and this is a project where we try to avoid the trappings of agents and egos. We are grateful for the folks who do hop on board; we’ve engaged some swell talent willing to play in our sandbox.
What new ground were you looking to break this season?
I’ll be happy if we can just keep the quality up, and tell unique, immersive stories that deliver the chills.
What can you say about your and McQuaid’s own stories for this lineup?
I’ll just say that Glenn has already written three great Tales for the season–he is a restless writer–but the one he’s landed on is dripping with atmosphere and quietly chilling. I hope that’s the one we put into production, but you never know… As for me, I like having the challenge hovering over me of needing to write a Tale; as David Lynch might have put it, it keeps me fishing for that idea. In the meantime, I busy myself with getting these others made, along with Jordan Gass-Pooré, our co-producer.
How has TALES evolved over the course of its 15 years?
That’s a question for the listener to answer. We have definitely played with the conventions of the genre in various ways; check out Glenn’s INT. COFFIN – NIGHT, a Tale with no dialogue. But I would say that the most significant thing to happen in the last 15 years is that the idea of audio dramas has gone from an “old-timey” throwback to one of the most potent formats of our time, as the number of podcasts and audiobooks has ballooned. I remember saying in the early days of Spotify that they should carry audio dramas–ha! So here we are.
Your movie BLACKOUT was based on one of your Tales. Do you envision more of them being adapted into feature films?
BLACKOUT was actually an idea I pitched for the TV show FEAR ITSELF, but they wanted me to do something different. Then I pitched it as a found-footage story for V/H/S, and they didn’t see it. I decided to do it as a Tale when I had to come up with an idea for an impending live show, and that production gave me the clarity to see the movie. So TALES is a format for working through ideas, and we hope it is inspiring for all the artisans who get involved to make it part of their creative journey.
