LF: The “pale” is an old term for stake; ironically, that’s where the word “impale” comes from. In the old days, you’d build a fence around your little village and anything outside of the pale was unknown and not to be trusted. So we thought it was a fun sort of throwback to an old school phrase and just exactly what we want to say.
Any particular series that directly inspired this one? LF:When I was little, before VHS or DVD, I would audio record movies onto cassette, and that’s how I experienced the pleasure of revisiting movies that I liked. Whether they were [James] Cagney films or the old Universal Horror films, I snuck a recorder into the theatre and I used to think I was breaking all manner of laws and I would be strung up if they ever caught me. But, as a result, I used to listen to movies over and over and I have such a sense of the rhythm of how each sound effect bleeds into a bit of dialogue, which leads into a music cue. I really do love the audio experience.
GM: It’s also just going back to my childhood when I grew up in Ireland. Roald Dahl had a television show called Tales of the Unexpected and there were a bunch of an- thology horror shows on when I was a kid that I was enamoured with.
You’ve assembled quite a list of talent for the series. What’s the appeal for them? LF: We’re all labouring to find funding for our next projects, we’re labouring to deal with the studio’s dismissal of something that may be too dark, too peculiar, too much CGI required, too big a budget. Every filmmaker seemed excited just to get an assign- ment. It’s not just speculation; we basically said, send us the script and we’re going to do it. It’s really been a fun community experience. Paul Solet, for example – he sent us his piece and had a beautiful-looking book, obviously as a pitch for a movie, that he just felt was rejected here and there. So he said, “What a great opportunity to realize this story.”
Larry, as the host, are you modelling yourself after anyone in particular – a real person, such as Arch Oboler, or fictional character, such as the old geezer from The Hermit’s Cave? LF: We had lots of ideas, obviously, but we just felt that me doing it was the most flexible. It will be an enhanced version of myself. I think what we’re going to play is that we’re receiving these submissions from the filmmakers. There’s a sort of pleasure in talking about all the [storytelling] formats that have existed over the years. Obviously there are letters but then there’s 8-tracks, CDs, fax transmissions. I think that we’re going to try to play with that because we’re very aware that we’re doing a sort of radio-style format in a digital age.
Can you give us a sense of the show’s flavour? LF: What’s lovely is that there is no set agenda at all. My own little story is in the realm of a ghost story – an Algernon Blackwood reminiscence, with the tone of To Kill a Mockingbird. I think we just want to give that short story jolt that you get where you just feel unsettled by the end. I don’t think we’re here to terrify. We’re here to unsettle.
Pale Writers: Glass Eye Pix founder Larry Fessenden (left), and filmmaker Glenn McQuaid, creators of Tales From Beyond the Pale.
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