Necip:
Which musical scores did you use for the 2000 Halloween special?
Jim: Like
I said, the whole Twilight Zone theme of this Halloween show was originally
an excuse to play selections from the score compilation. But while this box
set is a lot of fun for fans of The Twilight Zone and the Golden/Silver
Age composers who worked on the series, I found most of the tracks to be too
dull for the Halloween special. There were only two tracks that I felt worked
for the special: the suites from the episodes "Perchance to Dream"
and "The Invaders." So that's why all the other tunes that I included
on the special were not from The Twilight Zone. They were old favorites
from soundtracks to flicks like Halloween, Jaws, The Omen
and two movies that were in the limelight again because they were revived in
theaters during the fall, The Nightmare Before Christmas and The Exorcist.
Necip:
Were there any spooky musical scores this year that you especially liked?
Jim: The
2000 Halloween special marked the first time I ever played anything by
Goblin, an Italian band that did eerie rock scores for horrormeisters
like Dario Argento and George Romero during the '70s and '80s. The band
has a bit of a cult following in America, especially among movie-music
collectors. Film
Score Monthly columnist John Bender
is a huge Goblin fan and he once suggested I check out their music, so
I bought a Goblin greatest-hits CD and thought the themes from Deep
Red and Suspiria were kinda cool. And you can never go wrong
with those loungey "horrotica" tunes from the Vampyros Lesbos
soundtrack. Every Halloween, I play one or two tracks from Vampyros
Lesbos.
Necip:
What spooky musical score is your all-time favorite?
Jim: This
score is not from a horror movie, but it's really intense: the score from the
original Dirty Harry, by Lalo Schifrin. The music for the scenes with
Dirty Harry's nemesis, Scorpio, and when he has Harry running all over San Francisco
late at night from site to site, from pay phone to pay phone — that would
be nice to include in a future Halloween special. Another great nervewracking
score from a movie that's not really from the horror genre is Howard Shore's
score to The Game.
Necip:
You did a lot of funny voices this year. Which vocal impressions are you the
most fond of?
Jim: I'm
not sure if I pulled off all those voices that well. I don't know if my impression
of Rudy from Survivor is the best, but I just wanted an opportunity to
poke fun at how this guy who talks shit about gays became America's sweetheart:
"Aw, bigoted old people are so cute!" Speaking of Survivor,
I was one of those people who was absolutely riveted by that show, and at the
same time, found it completely evil. I was going to do a bit in the 2000 Halloween
special about the insidiousness of Jeff Probst, but I never got around to it.
It was probably because I don't give a shit about Survivor anymore, nobody
gives a shit about Survivor anymore and they won't give a shit about
Survivor II: The Outhouse or whatever it's called. That thing's gonna
flop faster than the next Travolta vehicle.
It took
me a while to perfect the voice of the Rod Serling-ish narrator. He was one
tricky mofo. To capture Serling's voice, I often had to stand up and do that
classic Serling mannerism, in which he clasps his right wrist with his left
hand. Early during recording, I asked you what you thought of my Serling, and
you said it was fine, but I disagreed. Then I realized why my Serling didn't
sound right: I didn't grit my teeth when I talked. I forgot that he always gritted
his teeth when he spoke on the show. So from then on, I picked up that mannerism.
Sulu from Star Trek is one of my favorite vocal impressions, but I don't
think I did his voice right on that show. That whole cheesy sketch I wrote,
in which your character recruits all these celebrities to fish me out of the
other dimension, was just an excuse for us to launch into our favorite impressions.
I got a kick out of that Adam West impression you did the first day of recording,
so I threw in a moment into that sketch where Adam West appears out of the blue
as an excuse for you to do him. And that line you ad-libbed during recording,
"Now if I can just reach my utility belt" — that was nice.
Brando
is always my favorite impression. It always gets a reaction. I threw in a bit
of Brando when I read a script for a calzone radio ad at a voice acting workshop,
and people laughed. I used to do Don Corleone for people at City on a Hill,
like my editor-in-chief, who would always ask me how to mimic his voice because
he's such a gangster-movie fan and he wanted to imitate Don Vito and he could
never nail it. A lot of comics imitate Brando, but they don't notice that there
are different kinds of Brando: there's the '50s Brando, with his dem-dese-dose
inflections; the Don Corleone Brando, which is raspy and wheezy; and the present-day
Brando, in which he doesn't sound wheezy at all, but he has that pretentious,
slightly British accent that you'd hear in Superman: The Movie or when
he testified at his son's trial.
Necip:
What was the toughest part of making the special?
Jim: With
the holiday specials, it's easy to forget that Fistful is first and foremost
a movie-music program, so I try not to write sketches that are too lengthy,
but I think I let the final sketch in the 2000 Halloween show go on too long.
It lasted a whopping eight minutes — wasn't that the length of that really
long opening action sequence in The World Is Not Enough? The day of the
broadcast, I was 15 minutes late to the station because editing that complicated
final sketch took me longer than I expected. I'm really impressed by what I
did with that final sketch — filtering my own voice, as well as my voice
as the alien leader, was tricky, but I lived through it, and another tricky
task was juggling all those sound effects for the alien leader and the big explosion
that happens at the end. So I like what I did with that closing sketch, although
in the back of my mind, maybe I made the sketch run longer than it should have.
Necip:
How long does it take you to put together one of these sketches?
Jim: I've
never taken note of how long it takes me to write and record each sketch. Maybe
it takes me 45 minutes or an hour — I'm not sure. I'd say it takes me as
much time as it does to write a typical intro to a movie-music tune for the
more normal editions of Fistful, and I don't know how long that takes
either. No… actually, now that I remember, the holiday editions of Fistful
take longer to write and record than the other editions because of all the dialogue
and sound effects. But there's one thing I do know — I'm trying to think
of ideas for sketches for the 2000 Christmas special, and I'm coming up empty.
It's simply because Halloween is more fun than Christmas. With the Christmas
specials, I don't feel as inspired or enthusiastic as I am when I write the
Halloween shows. Maybe it's because I'm an unsentimental guy, and Christmas
is such a sentimental holiday, so to me, Halloween is more fun. I feel like
I'm shooting blanks trying to come up with sketches for the 2000 Christmas special.
It's hard to top last year's Christmas show, with the Chorus of Department Store
Santas and that finale with Kris Kringle giving me a smackdown. So I guess for
the 2000 Christmas special, we'll just hear more of the Chorus of Department
Store Santas.
Necip:
Any plans/ideas in development for next year's Halloween special?
Jim: None
yet. I've always wanted to do a vampire theme for a future Halloween special.
In the next one, I'll probably spoof whatever thriller or horror movie is big
that year. In 1999, Blair Witch and The Sixth Sense were huge,
so I did bits about both movies. This year, the most popular genre movies were
What Lies Beneath and Scary Movie, although Scary Movie
doesn't really count since it was a parody — unless you found gags like
the transvestite gym coach's nutsack, the dick in Shawn Wayans' ear and the
geyser of cum to be scary. We didn't do any riffs on What Lies Beneath
because it didn't offer much to lampoon.
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