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Fear

by David Price

Fear. It’s the horror writer’s bread and butter because; well we’re all afraid of something, right? As horror writers, we do our best to convey our own irrational fears into our stories; hoping they strike a chord with the reader who wants to be scared. To me, it’s those phobia-type fears, the ones you just can’t explain why they freak you out so much; they make the most memorable stories. I mean, sure, death is usually going to find its way into any horror story, but that’s the easy one, isn’t it? Everyone’s afraid of death. But, it’s those little phobias that we don’t want to admit we have, which a horror writer can still use to give us the heebie- jeebies. A good horror writer will latch onto one of these “irrational” fears, probably something they have lived with themselves to some degree, and do their best to transfer that terrifying experience to the reader.

Claustrophobia’s a good one to start with. How many of you are afraid of tight spaces? I know people who can’t get an MRI without a sedative or watch movies in which someone is buried alive. Even elevators bother some people, I assume because they feel trapped for a while. Tight spaces never use to bother me at all. Growing up, I thought spelunking (cave exploring) looked like a pretty interesting hobby. When I was younger and my parents took us on vacation, I always wanted to check out the local tourist caves or mines. There was something hidden and mysterious down in those dark corners of the earth that appealed to me.

About five years ago, my wife and I took our kids to see a natural tourist attraction, the Lost River Gorge, up in the White Mountains of New Hampshire. There was one rock formation called the lemon squeezer that you have to twist and maneuver your body through. Everyone with claustrophobia avoids this particular attraction like the plague. My seven-year-old daughter squirmed her way to the other side, so I decided to give it a shot. Well, you guessed it, I got stuck. I couldn’t move for about thirty seconds no matter what I tried. That’s when the panic hit me. My heart started racing. Before I completely lost my cool, I tried in my calmest voice to explain to my daughter that I was stuck. Let me tell you, immobility is the wrong time to get an adrenaline rush. I realized that I had to calm myself down, if only for my daughter’s sake. I closed my eyes and took deep breaths until I could feel my heart slowing to a more reasonable beat. When I collected my thoughts, it occurred to me that backwards was the best option. I reversed the twisting that got me there in the first place and slowly backed my way out to freedom.

For years after that, my chest tightened up every time I remembered the event. My heart raced when I watched a scene from the movie The Descent where one of the spelunkers gets stuck in an impossibly tight crevice. She panicked and so did I. Now, I used to love that movie, and the first time I saw that scene it didn’t bother me at all. After my incident with the lemon squeezer, I could barely watch it. I avoided watching another favorite of mine, Kill Bill: Vol. 2, during this time as well because of the scene where Michael Madsen buries Uma Thurman alive. I just couldn’t take it.

I’d say claustrophobia had a good grip on me for three years or so, but I’ve been better lately. Thinking about tight spaces or watching someone get caught in one, like Ryan Reynolds in Buried or James Franco in 127 Hours no longer freaks me out. It was a strange three years, though.

Before the lemon squeezer, I never truly understood what all the claustrophobic fuss was about. I get it now. I’m not sure if I’m fully over it, but I’d like to put it to the test. Maybe it’s time to head back over to the Lost River Gorge and see if I can make it through the lemon squeezer this time. What do you think? Well I managed to write that without hyperventilating, so maybe I really am better. One thing’s for sure, now that I know what it’s like; you’ll be reading about some claustrophobic situations in stories of mine sometime in the future. And if I’m any good, you’ll know what it’s like to be caught in a tiny space, unable to move, heartbeat accelerating, hyperventilating, eyes darting uncontrollably this way and that, adrenaline coursing through your veins and making you struggle more, lodging you even tighter into your narrow little prison from which you’ll never escape.

‘Safe House’ Screenwriter Talks about His Heroes and His Movie

by Jason Harris

What do actors Denzel Washington, Ryan Reynolds, and Nicolas Cage and directors Simon West and Antoine Fuqua all have in common? They all have worked on projects written by David Guggenheim.

Guggenheim’s first screenplay, Safe House, was just released on DVD this past Tuesday. This was his first spec script sold.

“I got spoiled with this one.”

According to Guggenheim, a spec script is a screenplay written by someone who is not getting paid for it.

“You can spend a year of your own time and still not get paid. But the good news is that you have a fully completed script as opposed to a pitch where you go in with a sort of broad idea. This is a good way of packaging your whole story.”

The screenplay was sold in February of 2010, which was two years and a day before it was released in theaters, Guggenheim said. It took him about three months to write it.

“I was running out of time. I had a kid literally coming around the corner. If I didn’t sell something I wasn’t sure if I would be able to sustain a full-time job and full-time family and a writing career.”

If a screenwriter is living in New York, a spec script is the way to break into Hollywood and get people excited, he said. He had been writing them for 10 to 12 years before selling his first one.

“I couldn’t even process what was happening,” Guggenheim said about the sale of his first screenplay.

According to Wikipedia, Safe House was Washington’s second highest grossing movie to date. Guggenheim is “really proud of [his movie].”

“I didn’t think it would make $40 million opening weekend. I’m happy people liked it.”

He believes Washington was the first one cast in the movie and Reynolds was cast second.

“I can’t imagine anyone else doing it,” Guggenheim said about Reynolds portraying Matt Weston. “I think you see a totally different side of Ryan that you don’t usually get to see.”

Guggenheim has been inspired by a number of Hollywood writers such as Robert Goldman, Robert Towne, Lawrence Kasdan, Shane Black, and Joss Whedon. He considers all these writers, “character driven writers who have written huge action movies.”

“All these guys are amazing teachers.”

He considers Shane to be living the writer’s life, whom he considers a person who went off to write his own movies, which started with Lethal Weapon.

“I like that his scripts are his voice,” he said about Black, who is “generating new original material.”

Whedon’s name came up because Guggenheim had recently seen The Avengers, which he considers “incredible writing.”

“This is writing you try to achieve.”

The advice to would-be writers is always “write what you know,” he said. He claims he “doesn’t really know that much.” He does have five movies from the 1970s that have inspired him. Those movies are Three Days of the Condor, The Parallax View, Marathon Man, All the Presidents’ Men, and The Conversation, which Guggenheim considers “incredible.”

His advice to writers is to “keep writing.”

“If one script doesn’t work for you, it doesn’t mean you are not a good writer. That script had issues. Learn from that and keep writing. Just don’t give up.”

Guggenheim has worked with Tony Scott and Ron Howard and is working with McG right now, but would love to work with Stephen Spielberg, he said. He loves working with other writers too.

“Those are my idols,” he said, referring to other writers. “I get much more nervous about meeting writers that I have been following then, like, the biggest director in Hollywood.”

This screenwriter doesn’t have any other aspirations other than to write.

“I would prefer just sitting in a room writing …”

Along with his next movie Stolen, which is in post-production, directed by West and starring Cage, he is co-writing a novel, Exile, with his friend, Nick Mennuti, which will be published by Little Brown.

This article appears on the DVD Snapshot website.