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Hopefully you all
listened to me and checked out the STARZ presentation of Going To
Pieces: The Rise and Fall of the Slasher Film when it aired this past
weekend. If you didn’t it will be showing again on the STARZ
channel and you really need to get STARZ if you don’t already have it
and check out this great homage to the slasher film. I got to
have a quick talk with Michael Ruggiero who produced the special and is
also the man behind FEARFEST ‘06 which is airing through the haunt
season on STARZ.
HoH: I’ve seen
Going To Pieces and it just freaking rocks. This is a documentary
that every horror fan needs to see. What was the catalyst for
producing this special?
MR: Being a
lifelong horror fan myself, I had been working at IFC and we did a
documentary call American Nightmare and I was always proud of having
been at IFC when that was done. I had a bit of a hand in it just
a kind of silent advisor and that film kind of covered the 70's .
HoH: I didn’t realize you had a hand in that.
MR: Well, you
won’t see my name in the credits but I was at IFC and kind of the
resident horror geek and the folks behind the show they were coming to
me and asking “hey, what do you think about this and so on. It
was produced by a British company and I thought that it came out great
and we got to thinking, why not do a sequel to that but cover the 80's
. The 80's were when I grew up and I am a big fan of the slasher
film and that is when I befriended Tom (Savini) back in the 80's
working for Creation conventions doing the Fango shows so Tom and I
have known each other from like 1980 from me working those things and
being a big fan of his work so that is the era when I grew up and those
have always been my favorite horror films. So now here I am
working for STARZ, the VP of original production and on this pile of
potential project is this documentary about slasher films based on this
book by Adam Rockoff, which is a great book so I moved that project to
the top of the pile and started really rallying to make it THE project
to work on. For me, it was a dream project and I got to go right
to work on it almost as soon as I got to STARZ about a year and a half
ago and here I am now about to premiere this thing in Hollywood.
HoH: It was great
seeing so many of the old clips that you compiled. I, like you
came of age in the 80's and I had forgotten about some of these films
you dug up. Films like PIECES and MOTHER’S DAY.
MR: Oh man, PIECES was brutal man (laughs)
HoH: How were you able round up the talent you have on board?
MR: Well, we had
great producers and they took on the task of talent booking and I used
some of my relationships, certainly Tom, he and I get along so well and
he trusts my decisions so he jumped on a plane and came on out and he
is fantastic in this and I think we were really able to get him to open
up and reveal some stuff that he has never really said before or maybe
even thought of before. We had him for a whole day and were just
hitting him right and left with questions and really got him to think
about and recall things that people haven’t heard before and I like to
think that we have tapped into some new information.
HoH: Where did you film the segments at?
MR: We shot at a
ranch in the Hollywood hills. I was told it was the ranch were
The Devil’s Rejects was shot. It has a certain authenticity to it.
HoH: I could tell you guys tried to give it that Camp Crystal Lake look.
MR: It was perfect. We had a little pond there. A lot of great visuals there.
HoH: Any plans to release the show on DVD?
MR: It will come
out on DVD. We partnered with Think Films and they’ll be handling
the DVD release. It will probably come out sometime late spring.
HoH: I reported a few weeks back about STARZ and IDT merging into one monster company. What’s the story behind that?
MR: Yeah, it’s a
little bit ironic that STARZ will now be producing Masters of Horror
for Showtime. It’s great though joining forces with them and it
will lead to a lot of great programming
HoH: It’s going to
be great. Any chance that STARZ might be the first to give us all
a much need all horror programming channel?
MR: It has been
tossed around for years and there was even a few times I thought it
might actually happen but there really isn’t enough product to make a
true linear channel, not VOD or something like that, we really didn’t
have quite enough product to make it run. It would have been a
real skimpy thing and if we’re going to do it, we’re going to do it
right. There are a couple of other out there trying to make it
work but it really comes down to having enough product to make it work.
HoH: Well, I would
love to see Going To Pieces become a trademark thing for STARZ,
something that would you guys could update every year.
MR: Thanks, I
appreciate that. There are so many genres that I would love to
do. I would love to do Zombies, do one on Vampire films, all the
sub genres of horror films.
HoH: And to do it
with the completeness and obvious love for the genre, well for me
viewing Going to Pieces was just like sitting down with a bunch of
fellow fans and talking about the great films that have made us the
fans we are.
MR: I’m glad to
hear you say that because that is the truth of this show. It was
made for horror geeks by horror geeks and to STARZ’S credit, they
didn’t ask me to take anything out.
HoH: Yeah, the blood flows freely.
Click here to head on over to the
STARZ website where you can check out the schedule of films and see
when you can once again view Going to Pieces. You want to make it
a priority to check this out.
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