{"id":2239,"date":"2017-10-30T07:30:14","date_gmt":"2017-10-30T11:30:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/nickzaino.com\/departmentoftangents\/?p=2239"},"modified":"2017-10-30T01:24:18","modified_gmt":"2017-10-30T05:24:18","slug":"daily-horror-film-fest-this-is-a-dream-and-im-going-to-kill-you","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nickzaino.com\/departmentoftangents\/2017\/10\/30\/daily-horror-film-fest-this-is-a-dream-and-im-going-to-kill-you\/","title":{"rendered":"Daily Horror Film Fest: This Is A Dream and I\u2019m Going To Kill You"},"content":{"rendered":"

Two days left for the Daily Horror Film Fest, and I have a familiar name for fans of the Department of Tangents Podcast. On EP40 back in September, I spoke to Nate Dern<\/a> about his new book, Not Quite a Genius<\/em>. Dern is mostly known as a humor writer, and most everything in the book is either a humor piece or has an element of humor to it. But a couple of pieces in the book are terrifying, including one called \u201cThis Is A Dream and I\u2019m Going To Kill You.\u201d <\/p>\n

Dern writes a lot of short films for FunnyOrDie.com<\/a>, so making some of his short pieces into films to promote the book was a no-brainer. For \u201cDream,\u201d he cut the jokes and went for something more unsettling. \u201cI wanted to see if I could make a horror short, because I hadn\u2019t done it yet but it was something I wanted to do,\u201d he says. \u201cI wanted to lean into something that felt like a horror short.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cDream\u201d was a natural choice because if its dark theme. \u201cIt goes to my fascination with being able to tell what is real and not real,\u201d he says. Part of his inspiration was a movie called Waking Life<\/em>, which gave Dern the idea that the brain registers a dream the same way it registers reality. \u201cCertain parts of your brain light up the same way. I\u2019ve always been fascinated with that idea. And I just thought it would be a good horror premise, also in the same with Freddy Krueger<\/a>, the idea of, if you die in a dream, you die in real life. I think there\u2019s a long tradition of that in horror. I just wanted to play around with that a little bit. <\/p>\n

You can find the link to EP40 with Nate Dern and music from Corin Ashley here<\/a>. <\/p>\n