TIH 593: David Dastmalchian on Knights vs. Samurai, Count Crowley, and Embracing Horror

Michael David Wilson 0:07
Welcome to This is horror, a podcast for readers, writers and creators. I'm Michael David Wilson, and every episode, alongside my co host, Bob Pastorella, we chat with the world's best writers about writing, life lessons, creativity and much more. Today we are chatting to David Dastmalchian and you may know him from movies such as late night with the devil prisoners The Dark Knight and the boogey man, to name but a few. But in addition to David superb acting work, he is also a phenomenal writer, and that is primarily why we are talking to David today. See he has recently released the fantastic nights versus samurai graphic novel series via Todd McFarlane image. And at the time of recording, the third of the Knights versus samurai series has just come out on November 27 and boy oh boy, if you haven't checked it out, we really do urge that you do it is everything and a lot more that you would anticipate from such a title comic as nights versus samurai. And in addition to that, he has written the incredible count Crowley series and done a slew of things for DC horror. Now this episode, we really get to learn a little bit about David, including those formative years growing up, how he got into acting and his entire creative journey. Now, what we don't do so much is talk about late night at the devil, and that is because we only had an hour for this conversation, but we will be talking to David again next year, where we will be going deep in terms of Late Night with the devil, and some of his other things in terms of the movie world, and he's also got a hell of a lot of other projects coming up. So there will always be great things to talk about with David. This was an absolute pleasure. But you are not here to listen to me. You are here to listen to David, so let's take a quick advert break, and then we'll get on with a conversation.

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Bob Pastorella 3:38
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Michael David Wilson 4:10
Okay? With that said, Here it is. It is David Dastmalchian on. This is horror. David, welcome to this is horror.

David Dastmalchian 4:23
This is horror. I love the title. This is great honor. I'm excited to be here with you guys today. Thanks for having me.

Michael David Wilson 4:34
I need to take that sound bite because you say this is horror just better than anybody else, which you know really kind of is,

David Dastmalchian 4:45
this is horror. This is horror. Well, as an actor, all the tools that you're given, obviously, your voice is one of the most important of all the tools. And I've spent a lifetime Lo. Listening to everyone from Basil Rathbone to Vincent Price, you know, and you think about all the different amazing people that you want to emulate with your vocal work, contemporary actors too, you know. I think Benedict, Benedict Cumberbatch has got such an incredible facility with his vocal just range and strength, but yeah, I always wanted to be someone that could be doing the voices of horror trailers, Halloween records, spooky stories for children. I just read a chapter, The Lost chapter, the dot, the doctor, I believe it's called the doctor's guest from Bram Stoker's Dracula. I read it the other day at the library. For the public library, they had like a Halloween event, and I just but you have the perfect name for a podcast.

Michael David Wilson 6:04
There you go. Between between us. You have the perfect enunciation of it. We have the perfect name, if only they kind of yelled together. But for this episode, they do

David Dastmalchian 6:17
pull it from there, and now you can use it as your intro.

Michael David Wilson 6:20
I know, I know, there you go. Thank you so much. Now, before we get into horror fiction, I want to go all the way back to some of the early life lessons that you learned growing up, and I understand that you're from a conservative town, and you had quite a tumultuous home life. So that's an interesting combination to begin with.

David Dastmalchian 6:47
Very interesting. I am the son of a immigrant to the United States from Iran. My father immigrated in the 1950s to the United States and then stayed because circumstances prevented him from returning back to his home. He met my mother, who was a New England born and raised woman who was studying in Colorado. I believe at the time that they met, they were of college age, and theirs was one of those, you know, I think it was a whirlwind romance. They fell in love. They got married. I believe much against my mother's family's, which wishes, because my father was an immigrant, and he converted from Islam to Christianity, probably just to appease my mother. I don't know if he actually had any deep faith or abiding faith at the time, but my mother had developed over the years a very, very strong evangelical belief system that did continue to change and evolve over her years. I will always want to give her credit for that. But I would say in the 1980s she was in probably the deepest entrenchment of what I would personally consider some of the more problematic belief systems of the dogma of evangelicalism, including the villainization of the other in society, the villainization of any other belief systems in society, the You know, prototypical, very you know, man is in charge of woman, and there is no room for any other you know is, it was a very it was the community in which I lived in the Midwest. Growing up in Kansas, it's still a very conservative part of the United States. But you know, is very much religion and guns are considered really important values. And for you know, a young boy who questioned everything from patriarchy to all those paradigms. It was a difficult place to be someone who questioned a lot and things like rock and roll music, fantasy, anything from Dungeons and Dragons to heavy metal magazine to the films of you know, as ridiculous as it may sound, people like Steven Spielberg's, you know, Indiana Jones films, all of that was really villainized. You can imagine the villainy associated with things is joyful, is Halloween or, you know, the power of monster movies, which happened to be things that were my favorite. I was so drawn to monster movies and Halloween and horror. So you may say the rebel in me was rebelling against the world in which he was finding himself trying to determine or discover identity amidst what felt like in authenticity or even unsafety. But the results are just in me, this since I was quite young, like lure to those those things, and I always felt drawn to and a kindred spiritual connection to, oh, the outsider, the good monsters, the creepy creatures that might have hearts of Gold. I always, I always felt, you know, yearning to in a connection to the queer people, anyone that was outside of just what seemed like such uniformity. So that's, that's how it all kind of started. And you may know this already about me, but one of my early fascinations was creeping downstairs late on Fridays to watch cremation mortimes Friday nightmare Theater, where she would play old horror films such as Curse of the werewolf, which is one of the first horror movies I ever saw the old dark house, the Invisible Man, all the way through the really more questionable things, you know, the plan nine type films. And I say questionable, you know what I mean. I guess more of the z and b movie, those channels that the local affiliate TV stations in the United States that had horror hosts, they didn't have budgets to be paying licensing fees for, you know, Rosemary's Baby or the Texas chainsa massacre they were paying they had pennies, or they would even get free catalogs of old films that they would be able to show on their late night Creature Feature. So you're watching the brain that wouldn't die or something, you know? But, yeah, that's how it all that's how I got bit by the the first werewolf bite that I got that turned me into a howling Full Moon mad man was, was all that.

Michael David Wilson 12:56
Yeah, and we're so thankful that you did have that bite given, you know what came after. But I'm wondering, I mean, growing up in not only a religious household but a religious area, at what point did your parents cotton on to the fact that, like, okay, David is sneaking downstairs. He's watching these horror movies. Is really into horror, and at the point where they found out, okay, this is what you're into, what? But a all encouraging? Were they very discouraging? I mean, I think my

David Dastmalchian 13:32
father didn't really seem to care. He was more into sports or action film, so, like, if we were going to rent a movie together to watch on the VHS, it would have been a Delta Force or a Chuck Norris or a Charles Bronson. That was kind of our thing. He wasn't really into horror, fantasy, science fiction monsters. Mother, absolutely not. She really didn't like it. And I leaned in. I mean, I loved Halloween. I would have to be in charge of if there, if there was going to be a pumpkin carved on our front porch, if there was going to be any decorations, if there was going to be anybody handing out the candy, I had to really take initiative, because it wasn't something that was celebrated in in our home. It was seen as evil, and so it was not encouraged. In fact, I remember being a part of a youth group that had like a Halloween party, which, instead of handing out anything spooky, they were doing, you know, maybe like caramel apples with Bible verses on them or something. But I remember thinking like, Oh, this is just all kinds of wrong. And I remember this wonderful night my mother really didn't, she didn't. She disliked horror so much, but she had this special place in her heart for Alfred Hitchcock. Don't ask. Wine. So the first time I ever saw psycho, my mother sat with me in the basement, and we watched psycho together. Now, isn't that interesting of all the films, especially a film about a mother and son relationship that is very, very dark, but she She not only allowed me to watch it, she was something she really loved. I don't know if she had a early, maybe a teenage, memory of seeing the whatever that was Hitchcock was permitted. Maybe he was seen as less savage. He certainly was no Herschel, Gordon Lewis, or anything that I was into at the time, but I do recall that. But truly, I mean, I was dedicated in high school. I was the president of my senior class, which was an elected position that you ran for, you campaign for, and I won the vote to be the president of the senior class because the reason I wanted the job so badly, you were responsible for organizing a fundraising event that was to raise money to support a dry graduation party to keep everyone from drinking and driving. So you were responsible for organizing a fundraiser. And the fundraiser that I organized, I converted the entire school into a haunted house, and we had a mausoleum. We had a catacombs, we had a mad lab. We had a chainsaw being chased area. I mean, it was the coolest. We had a psycho clown section. We raised, like, $3,500 over one night at the honey house. But my mom helped. We did a little kids section we called Land of the Great Pumpkin, where there was clowns and, you know, little things for the little kitties to do. So she came and helped with that because she didn't want to see the scary things we were doing.

Michael David Wilson 17:11
That is an incredible, you know, visual. And, I mean, you hear kind of dry party, and it's like, where's the fun gonna be there? But it's like, well, if we turn everything into a haunted attraction, okay, yeah, yeah. I

David Dastmalchian 17:30
mean, truly drunken people are one of my least favorite things, so, like, they're much scarier to me than a werewolf or a Frankenstein's monster barreling towards me.

Michael David Wilson 17:41
Yeah, I think that's fair, particularly in the UK. You know, it's kind of go for a pint, stay for the fight, which I'm not a fighter. You can probably tell that. So, yeah, not my favorite idea. But I mean talking about fighting and brutality, despite your mother not encouraging horror, what she did do, as far as I understand, is tell you some very brutal Bible stories growing up. So in a sense, you got some horror in that way. I'm wondering when you were hearing these stories, whether you were reacting in kind of horror that these things were happening, or if there was a kind of creative fascination for you, or if there was a mix of the two, there's

David Dastmalchian 18:37
two really brutal stories that instantly come to mind as I'm remembering being young, and I was kind of obsessed with both of them. The first is the book of Job and the story of this man who God puts to the test in the most savage, just brutal way where the man's body, at one point is covered with sores that are so bad he's taking like stones and trying to excavate miserable pain. These children are slaughtered in his own home, crushed by like a collapsing, you know, structure, this fire, there's famine, there's plague. It's like, oh, that story really resonated with me for two reasons, one of which the gore and horror of it was just like, so, just shocking. And the second was how terrifying, the horror of having a omnipotent being, your Creator, your master, your God, who is almost the way, like a child, who is playing with their pet, you know, but hurting it would do just to prove is like loyalty or something it was. Like, it really messed me up. But I also was fascinated with it, because I wanted to be like, job. I wanted to be someone that you could put through the gauntlet, and I would still claim faith, or I would still at least be the loyal person that you know. So there was something it's really twisted and unhealthy, I think now looking back on it, but I remember thinking like, Wow, what a noble figure someone like job could be. And the other was the book of Revelation, because I'd heard it spoken of in, you know, and quoted from artists ranging from Iron Maiden to motley crew to film to in church. So I just, that's the, that's the book of the Bible that I was always reading and studying. That was the that was the book I was really fascinated with. Because I thought, Oh, what if there's some kind of, like, alchemical, you know, Alistair Crowley type of code locked within the mysteries of these, these Bible verses that are gonna tell us how the world is gonna end, really graphic, horrifying stuff. And I would go to this youth group where they made movies that they would show like there are these faith based movies about the end, like the about the Rapture. I believe the movie was called a thief in the night, and I need to go back and see if I can find them on like YouTube or something, but they were really aggressively melodramatic and terrifying films about, like, the devil's gonna come. He's gonna take be the President of the United States. He's gonna, oh wait, oh boy, wow. We've just had an election here. And I know I'm just kidding. Anyway, it's a It was terrifying. It was really utterly terrifying. Yeah.

Michael David Wilson 22:02
And the thing with the book of Revelation as well. I mean, of course, a lot of us horror fans were instantly attracted to that one the most. But you know, as you're talking about it, and I'm thinking about it, you know, with all the doom and the monsters and the apocalyptic visions, I mean, it's as if, for the Bible, they were like, We need a third act. We need a way that we're really gonna take this one home. And, you know, did they get a kind of ancestor of Ben Wheatley? Because it has that shift and that genre change to it. I mean, it is remarkable, when you think about it, that this is in a holy book. But, yeah, hey, it's what they went for.

David Dastmalchian 22:49
It's wild. It was wild. Who I forget. It was Paul or John who wrote the letter of the revelations, I believe. I can't remember. It's fascinating. I haven't gone. I need to go back and look at that. I haven't read it in a while.

Bob Pastorella 23:02
I grew up in Catholic and so I seen that film, a thief in the night. I've seen it. They showed it in a catechism class. And then I think there was a little Hap Bob about it, like they they shouldn't have shown it, or something like that. But, you know, going growing up in that way and being being a Catholic, it's like reading. You know, I got in trouble, probably in middle school, and my punishment was to read the Bible, and had to talk to my dad about it, and so I had to read the whole Bible. And it's like, you get, you get all this doom and gloom and destruction and everything like that in the Old Testament and in the whole thing is, but he loves you. And I'm like, you know, I came away from that years later, that if there is a God, I and I, I'm a person of faith, I'm just pretty much agnostic, but if there is a God, then I don't think he's the asshole that everyone makes him out to be.

David Dastmalchian 24:13
I couldn't agree with you more, Bob, I think that the concept of a punishing, of that punishing figure we see is the white, patriarchal old man with the beard pulling levers because you've done this thing right. You get this because you've done this thing bad. You're getting this, the doling out of the and the concept that that he he is looking down on us, waiting to see if we supplicate properly, if we do this properly, and only these folks are going to then, you know, come to the gift everyone else is going to go to the punishment. That whole thing, it really unfortunately messed me up in the relationship that I think is really beautiful and powerful, that one. Man has the potential to have with what, what I terminology I use often, is a higher power, with the mysterium tremendum, with God, whatever you choose to believe or not believe. And I truly believe even atheists can have an incredible relationship with it, because through the power and the wonder of just the scientific nature of the world that exists around us. It's so incredible. And there's something that is driven towards life. There is something beautiful, benevolent within that that is pulling us towards something. And here I am at 49 and I'm like working on an entirely new relationship and healing the old one from being little and being in so much fear of of of some great force that would abandon me if I didn't do things the right way. I just don't I don't personally care a to tell anybody else what they should or shouldn't believe, or what they're thinking should be or shouldn't be when it comes to this kind of stuff. But for me personally, it's been really wonderful and powerful to to feel like I'm doing exactly what I should be doing with my life when it comes to this stuff, and that's okay, yes, yeah, 100%

Michael David Wilson 26:29
so I mean, when you were growing up and you're into horror, and you've got all these messages from the church community, it Sounds like perhaps there was, if not some shame, then some feeling that what you're doing is not in line with God, it's not in line with the way that it's supposed to be. You're saying kind of. Fast forward now to 49, years old, and you're finally comfortable, you know, in your skin, with your horror. And so I mean, what? What does that journey? What has that journey looked like? And when? When do you think you really started to embrace the real you?

David Dastmalchian 27:13
I think that, fortunately for me, I've always been hard headed enough to fight from my right to collect comics, to rent horror movies to celebrate Halloween, but it always came with a burden and a weight of some guilt and shame. For certain, I also, as I made my way into adulthood, struggled with, you know, anxiety, depression, addiction and identity, learning the difference between who I am, who I can Love about myself and who I can love in the mirror, and who I wish the world would see me as was and continues to be a very interesting journey. When I started to find success in film and television, it became a forced conscious thought, because you are, in many ways, your own brand, if you will, as an entertainer, and you are presenting yourself to producers, casting agents, and all the other entities within the entertainment industry as a product. And it's, of course, what is my talent offering to this project. What is my skill set offered to this project? What does my face look like in context of what potential work I may be getting, what energy, what charisma, what vibe, if you will, is, does it mean to be David dylchen and as a storyteller, I felt at different times like, oh, it's really important to be the Take it all seriously. I'm only going to do theater, or I'm only going to do, you know, high art, independent drama, or perhaps I'll be taken more seriously if I can be considered in this way. And thank the fates that coming from that space where I was proud and doing proud work, or doing work that I was proud of in in context of, like Shakespearean productions on stage and Tennessee Williams, and you know, that form of art that the first time I was permitted onto A film set was a Christopher Nolan. So therefore the high art kind of the really masterful cinema world, take on a Batman story. A Batman story, nonetheless, that was centered around the Joker. My one of, if not my all. Time favorite character from literature and the pages of comic books, certainly. So once that happened, I was really grateful, because people immediately kind of associated me as I started to make my way into auditioning, getting more opportunities introducing myself to the landscape of professional storytellers. I'd been given that kind of T shirt that already said, Oh, he's can be in a Christopher Nolan world, and in the world of superheroes and fantasy and and the term genre, which, as we know, often leads to horror science fiction, is something I just said, Well, this feels like fate. So no, I'm not going to hide my comics. I'm not going to hide my Famous Monsters of film lands. I'm not going to try and put on or dress myself up as you know, I don't know, maybe a lot of young actors aspired or wanted to be Robert De Niro, or they, or they have dreamt of being Al Pacino, or they had this vision of Gene Hackman in their hearts, whatever that thing is. And I'd say mine was always John kazao, Peter Laurie, you know, Boris Karloff, Lon Chaney. Lon Chaney Jr, really like leaning into that and knowing I could do work that I'd be really proud of as a storyteller, and could exist in all those spaces without limiting myself and and even within the last year, in this new developed relationship that I'm starting to really feel with like purpose and life and the great, you know, the great spirit I go what I'm doing has use and purpose beyond just me playing with toys that I always wished I could have gotten to play with as a kid. I think there's a really powerful opportunity in telling stories within the genre space that can help people wrestle, wrestle with the questions that we all face about mortality and identity and fear and insecurity and isolation and mental struggles. Think about a film like late night with the devil, and I go, there's so many wonderful questions posed and explored in a film like that that many people watching may not think of consciously or apparently, as things that they wrestle with, but I think that they do. And I get to write comic books like count Crowley, where we're wrestling with addiction and trauma and all these issues that I really care deeply about, but in a useful, purposeful way, I can battle werewolves and vampires and zombies and possessed people and go, go there. It's a real, wonderful reality, right? Do

Michael David Wilson 33:07
you think there was a specific moment in this last year that has led you to this revelation? Because it sounds like it's been perhaps the most pivotal year in your life.

David Dastmalchian 33:21
This has, hands down, been the most pivotal year in my life, and I wish I could say that it was because of the success of Late Night with the devil my association or participation in the multiple Academy Award winning Christopher Nolan film Oppenheimer the uh, amazing, uh, chance that I had to go to Canada and work on a fantastic science fiction story for apple with the whites brothers and Alexander Skarsgard and a bunch of other great artists, the adventure that I'd been taking to South Africa where I've been working on my kids favorite show, one piece. But it wasn't through the art. What it was, was a kind of metaphorical car crash, if you will, of my own, where my bearing of denial of all of the things that I have been struggling with since I was probably seven years old, and a lot of that does relate to that religious religiosity and the paradigms and dogmas that I was given, as well as the fear and feelings of abandonment of that reality this year, for multiple, multiple reasons, kind of all came crashing down on my psyche in kind of a the collapsing of a house of cards, and I just saw all of these structures that I built to keep myself feeling safe and secure. Utterly useless, totally just pointless. And I had to get all the way down to like, just the core foundation of who I am. What is what is this all about? And I started that journey this spring, and it's opened so many wonderful spaces within me to embrace what it is that I love so much about being a storyteller, what it is and why it's okay that I think horror is such a special genre, why I can finally let go of a lot of the crap I've been carrying around in this Invisible Backpack, or whatever metaphor you want to use that we all carry with us that's just so laden with, you know, golf balls, tennis balls, bowling balls, full of historical baggage and so I'm excited about the next chapter. It's, it's interesting too, because a lot of these revelations and a lot of this kind of work began for me while I was in the midst of finishing up creature Commandos, um, Knights versus Samurai, several different writing projects that I'm currently in the midst of right now, several different acting opportunities that I was in the midst of, and it just kept reaffirming that the best way I will ever be able to Tell stories is to dig into being as authentic as possible, removing as much artifice as possible, and being willing to be scared, vulnerable and brave in the face of fear, which is exactly what makes really well made horror, I think, grab you. When you think about a film like The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, you walk away thinking about, of course, the gore, or maybe the savagery of certain scenes and certain kills and certain the way that leather face looks with that mask. But there's something else in there that every none of us, as far as I know, hopefully, nobody who's in your audience has been chased and tortured through a farmhouse in the middle of rural Texas by Sado, you know, masochistic cannibals. But there's something in that that we all can relate to,

Michael David Wilson 38:08
right? And I think that brings us quite nicely to count Crowley, I mean in terms of putting the personal into your stories. I mean, they're probably with the exception, possibly, of your 2014 film animals, there's no more deeply personal art that you've put out in terms of the struggle of addiction. But then you've combined that with your love of monster movies. You've combined it with your love of horror hosts, which, of course, ties into late night with the devil as well. So I mean, for me that this kind of seems like a dream project, which has distilled all that is you into this graphic novel. And you know, as a horror fan, it's, it's deeply rewarding, because you can encounter it on two levels. You could have the more surface level, okay, we've got some cool monsters and some set pieces and a lot of comedy, but then you've got something that's almost exploring humanity, what it is to be human, what it is to overcome things and to struggle and to be addicted. So I'd love to hear a little bit about how this one came about and what the starting point was for you.

David Dastmalchian 39:36
The starting point was my childhood, for certain. You know, watching cremation mortem on ks hbtv 41 in Kansas City on Friday nights. And just the world in which the horror host subculture exists and intrigued me, is the first seed that was planted then. I remember at a young age seeing Fright Night and the Roddy McDowell, you know, Creature Feature host, character who gets approached by these kids that need help. And how do you fight a vampire? He's like, I'm a horror host. There's no real vampires. Then I was inundated with so much inspirational material as a kid, watching, you know, or reading everything from Buffy the Vampire Slayer to hack slash the the Bloodstone, you know, family and their arcs in the Marvel Universe. The wonderful thing about, you know, like heroes and anti heroes in the comic book, space figures like blade, who I loved, and Ghost Rider and Moon Knight and werewolf by night, and Morbius and so many others, Tomb of Dracula. And I grow up and I go, wouldn't it be cool if there's a horror host, but secretly, their real job, they're a Monster Hunter. That's a neat idea, but you know what? It's not enough of an idea to actually really sink your teeth into. Then I go on this long journey, this battle that I've been on for most of my adult life. You know, of of being an addict and alcoholic. I'm 22 years clean and sober this year, but the journey of being an addict and alcoholic doesn't just stop when you take your last drug. Doesn't just stop when you take your last drink. It is a it is like entering a monastery, if you will, of like a lifetime, kind of beautiful. I'm grateful for a discipline of work that sometimes I've completely shrugged off and has cost me dearly, even if I didn't pick up again. And so my voice as a storyteller was growing over this time, and I came to believe that anything of value that I was ever going to write, whether it be a monster movie or an indie drama needed to come from something meaningful within. So I started to really think about this horror host being an addict who's fighting the demons within, while at the same time the demons without. And I imagined he was named Jerry with a Y like short for Gerald. And I started to build this mythology in this world, and then we entered this very strange era in recent history where truth, facts, data, information, results, election results, proof of things, evidence of things, even even even conviction of things didn't seem to matter if someone was loud enough and powerful enough to say no, even though that's, that's, that's what you're looking at. I'm we're all watching the same news camera, but I'm gonna say that that's fake that's fake news, and all of a sudden, 50% of people will believe it. 50% of people go, God, you're right. Look at that. There's footage of dozen children slain by a mad gun man. But there's one person with a powerful, strong, well financially supported. Voice who goes, that didn't really happen. That was that's that they are. They are pulling your hearts. They're they're messing with you. That was what we call, um, a false flag. Oh, my God, all these scientists are saying, here's the truth, here's how we can keep safe. No, it's fake. And I go, What the hell there's there's a horror in that to me that just rips my soul apart. And so I go, What if the monsters, the bad monsters, have been creating all of this mythology? And creating the reality in which we now live in belief. I guarantee you, if, even as someone that's a scant horror fan, just a just a person that sees one scary thing a year, if you and me and that person, we were all trapped in a room, and suddenly there was a real vampire coming. That person would run and grab a crucifix. That person would run and grab the holy water, because that's what we all have been taught, is the way you defeat these things. What if it's all been a lie? What if we've really been fed fake news and information for generations just in preparation for when the monsters are finally going to come whoop our asses and get revenge? Oh, my God. Then the story started to really break through for me, and the last little key element to it was as all of these voices started coming up about women who had faced intense abuse or discrimination or assault in the workplace, at school, at home, and hadn't been. Believed, I go, who is a better person to be trying to stop monsters in a dramatic story than somebody that no one is believing? And so I created this hero, Jerry, short for Geraldine Bartman, who is an alcoholic, so no one will believe her. She's a woman. It's 1983 and so her voice is not as listened to, and she doesn't give a crap about monsters like she wants to be a serious, legitimate news broadcaster, and here she is a drunk can barely stand up the only job she can get host in the late night Creature Feature. To me, that's how it all came together. And then I was working on the new reboot of MacGyver. I was playing Murdoch on MacGyver, and the guy who created that show, he and I bonded over our love of Colt chuck the Night Stalker. And I said, I have this idea that's kind of inspired by colchic The Night Stalker, like somebody that no one believes. She's a reporter. She's got a problematic personality, she's kind of a pain in the ass. And he thought the idea was so great. He introduced me to Mike Richardson, who's the head of Dark Horse publishing. I met Mike, I told him the idea, and immediately he said, let's do four issues and see what happens. Let's see how it goes. I started, and I have never looked back since it's been one of the greatest joys of my life. We just released the third volume in trade paperback form. The story keeps going, and it's been and it's great, because here I am a guy in recovery. I still work the steps of the 12 steps, and Jerry is just on step one and step two. She's just scratching the surface. So it's really cool for me as the parallel to my own life to get to inform her journey with my knowledge and experience in recovery. Yeah,

Michael David Wilson 47:00
and in terms of the reaction to this, I mean, have you found, given that it's such a universal story, that there's so many elements that can appeal to people, are you bringing in a wider audience than just, you know, perhaps the horror crowd and what people might have anticipated?

David Dastmalchian 47:21
I hope so, and it's really helpful. You know, when I have folks such as yourself willing to talk about it on your shows, or I am very fortunate that I have the benefit of going out to promote, you know, the latest Universal Pictures film or the latest TV show that I've been working on. And when I do, I always try to find an opportunity to slip in there a little count Crowley plug, or knights versus samurai plug. Whatever I might be working on is my personal project, but it's pretty wild. In the last several years as a comic creator, my voice has started to really grow. I really feel like I know who I am as a storyteller, especially after this year of really getting deeper into myself and and creators like Todd McFarlane, Jim Lee, Scott Snyder, James tiny in the fourth, Tula lote and Becky Cloonan and many, many, many, many more Even Emile Ferris who I think is a goddess. They've all given me praise or approval for the work of Crowley, and that is a blessing. You know, Steve Niles liked count Crowley so much, he was willing to do a team up with me. And you know His character, Cal, you know, from criminal macab is like so in Jerry's space, next up, I got to do something with the goon. I tell you what. I'll

Bob Pastorella 48:49
tell you. I grew up reading those worn magazines creepy Gary vamperella, and I see a lot of that in Crowley. I see, I see a lot of creep shows, a lot of EC comics in there. Yes, I see that and and the so there's the nostalgia, but there's also, like, you know, this, this deeper story, and that's it. So there's layers there. You know that that I really, really like the artwork is, is beautiful. The story is great. Even, like with vampires, just little things like, you know, how you, how you kill them, you got some very, very European vampire lore in there that just, you know, it's not your typical, hey, you know, we need to have a steak and things like that. And then the concept of it, of them actually running the the world, you know, has this kind of a Day Breakers type thing. And so, man, you, you tied all this stuff together. And I love it. It's, it's saying. You. It's freaking great, man.

David Dastmalchian 50:01
Thanks, Bob. I am so proud of it. And Lucas Kettner, I wouldn't be anywhere with Count Crowley without his work. His art is hands down, some of the coolest art in comics right now. He had done a book for a while called Witch Doctor, which I had seen and thought was a beautiful scary horror book. And he every issue just nails it. I've been so lucky as a comic creator. I've been partnered with some of the best comic artists in the business, great editors, great publishers, colorists, letters, you name it. It's a labor of love. Kind of job? You know? You don't, definitely don't make comic books to get rich, that's for sure. You You put them out there, and then you hope and pray that maybe one of your babies will take off, and people really love it, and then you can continue to do it. So I just I dream and hope and pray that people continue to show up for count Crowley, because I've got so much story to tell with Jerry and this most recent volume, we got into witchcraft. We've got a Frankenstein's monster, but much more inspired by Frank and hooker, if you will, kind of plot line that I'm excited about. And it's pretty great. It's pretty great. And I love horror comics, you know, thinking of speaking of creepy and eerie and all that, anything that Warren had their hands on. I mean, he was amazing. But I've been doing a lot of anthologies as well, which I love. I love anthological storytelling in the fashion of creep show. So this year, I did DC horror presents. My writing partner, Leah Kilpatrick, and I did this really terrifying story inspired by doll house, who's the daughter of doll maker, and you get everything from facial skin removal to frankensteining bodies back together. We also wrote a very creature inspired story called Leech Lake for dark horses, headless horseman. Anybody out there who's in the audience that wants to check out last year's Headless Horseman, which Tyler cook drew for us. It's oddly prescient to kind of the time we're living in now and and I'm doing more like I'm really excited. I would love to bring back that EC, because you it's wonderful to have characters that you want to follow for hundreds of issues, but it's also sometimes lovely to just have your twilight zone, to just have your your short you know,

Michael David Wilson 52:27
yeah, and I would certainly urge that people do pick up count. Crowd, Lee, I mean, even if you're not into graphic novels necessarily, because there's so much that you're gonna get just as a reader, as a fan of storytelling, this is a very rich book, so take a chance on it, and I do not think that you will regret it at all. Now we should talk briefly about knights versus Samurai, which is the latest graphic novel, and I should say, for listeners as well, the only reason that we're jumping so quickly two topics is because we've only got a finite amount of time with David today. Like each of these topics, each of these stories could be an hour in themselves, but we're not doing the eight parter, so this is just the one hour. So I mean nights versus samurai. Extremely evocative title. It tells you what you need to know, really. And as a British guy living in Japan, it's like, this is perfect for me. You've got 16th century nights versus samurai. Tell us about the genesis of this one

David Dastmalchian 53:47
so completely removing any historical accuracy, or, you know, devotion to the cultural and historical and mythological realms that both of these two worlds you know, like, yeah, like you're saying 16th century English and 16th century Japanese cultures. As a kid playing the deeply forbidden game of Dungeons and Dragons, I remember how fascinated Lee, obsessed. I was with the idea of pitting English knights, warriors, you know, against Japanese samurai. I just always just strictly esthetic alone, the concept of, you know, chain mail, Mace, Broadsword, up against Katana. And the pageantry and the and the art of battle styles, to me, was always just like, and there was lots of if you were, if you were a collector of not just monster manuals, but weaponry manual. And and looking through all the stuff with D and D, I just so I didn't know much at that time. Then when I got into high school and started to really love, you know, everything from Beowulf on down the line that led me into the history of, you know, English, lit, and then, you know, English, especially like feudal, feudal England and and and and the mythology behind knights, as well as mythology in general, especially English mythology witches and trolls and ogres, etc. Dragon tales really got me high school. I became fascinated and obsessed with Japanese culture, history and language through Film and Comic books, etc, I started to really get turned on to Japan. Became a bit of a Japanophile, and I studied Japanese in high school, and I really loved everything Japanese. So over time, I was like, how does that story work? How do I find a knight and a samurai other than the fact that a broad sword would break a katana in half? How do I make this work? How do I get these two on a battlefield together? And here we are in 2024 going into 2025 in a, you know, 1000s of years Human civilization has existed, and yet still, the one major, big conflict that exists in every corner of this world is people who look differently than us, who speak differently than us, who worship differently than us, who live in a different place than us, who we can't easily, readily communicate with, because there are barriers between us. Are the people that are most easily manipulated by the aristocracy into our belief system as being enemies, as being the the savage, the villain. So I thought, how wonderful would it be if a corrupt aristocracy in Feudal England and a corrupt aristocracy in feudal Japan had both sent great warriors on missions under false pretenses, and these warriors lives intersected, and suddenly they're trying as best they can to defeat one another, But something in there, a warrior heart says, I don't believe that this person is my enemy. What's gonna happen? Throw in some oni dragons, witches, sorcerers, and you have knights versus Samurai, a story that, to me, is about those big questions and big issues, and what it is that separates us and what it is that makes us the same, and how we can learn to overcome this fighting together, to save this earth and save one another and save the good guys, is, is what it's all about. To me. Oh, yeah, and Teresa. So Teresa matsura, I've been listening to her podcast for years. It's called uncanny Japan. You are both familiar with it. I would I've listened to it for years. It's one of the many podcasts my kids and I listened to on the way to school. I listened to it strictly for the love of Japanese ghost stories and mythology. But then when I started doing research, because I pitched my idea for knights versus samurai to Todd McFarlane, and just like you guys, he goes, Oh, the name itself. It's peanut butter and jelly. It's bread and butter. We I love it. And then I told him my idea, and he was like, I he the whole he believes so much in that same i principle as I do as we're often told that people who believe differently than us are enemies when they're not. And so I reached out to Theresa. I'd been a Patreon supporter of her show for a long time, but I'd never communicated with her directly. And so I reached out and said who I was, what I was doing, and would it be possible? Because as much as I've known and studied and learned about Japanese culture, history and language, I knew that as an American appropriating so much, it was going to be a minefield of potential mistakes I could make that could be everything from just foolish to offensive. So I really wanted somebody to help consult with me, and I want kanji in the pages of the book. I want our Japanese characters speaking Japanese. So she just got right on board, and she just started sending me great monsters and great mythology and ideas, and she's become a friend. Even though we've never met in person, I consider her a close friend. Yeah,

Michael David Wilson 59:36
and you mentioned having the kanji in the text. Then when I saw that, it was like, Wow, that really jumped out. And it really gives that feel. It's as near as I think we've had in in a book to having subtitles, you know, it works so perfectly that there's the little bonus as a Japanese learner, there's like, Oh, now you can. Really test your Japanese ability. Yeah, yeah. It's like, you can be good at Japanese, and then it's like a you 16th century Samurai, good.

David Dastmalchian 1:00:10
What a dream for me. What a dream that I could have fans and readers in Japan who can hopefully, potentially enjoy this book as much someday as my readers do in the UK, in the States, you know, in English speaking countries. So yeah, thank you. And and I'm grateful to Theresa, because because of her, is how I got introduced to you, and that's how we know each other. And you're right. We only got to touch on some of these subjects for a very brief amount of time. So my hope is someday, in the future, when I'm a little less busy. I don't know when that will ever be, but when it happens, we can just continue the conversation. Because what's nice is, in the space of storytelling, it's like every year I'm at least making one, if not many other things. Right now, we've got creature commandos at DC. We've got DC horror presents. At DC, they had this horse, minute Dark Horse. Count Crowley at Dark Horse. Nights versus samurai with image. I'm doing a book with z2 and then in the the in the film space, you know, late night with the devil has opened a lot of doors for some wonderful new horror projects that I'm working on and going to be putting out in the world, and so it would be really great to come back again do chapter two of our conversation, and hopefully by then you will have gotten to devour even more of my comics, because the further you get into knights versus Samurai, the more the horror starts To come into full effect,

Michael David Wilson 1:01:41
yeah. Well, this is it at the time of recording. We are just two issues in so we're just starting to see what is about to kick off. And there's already been a lot of great violence. There's been some amazing humor as well. In fact, one of the lines that I wrote down, it's the Japanese seeing white men for the first time, and they say they come from a land with no light, perhaps they seek to steal as I just love that moment. And, you know, I think there's a playfulness, and there's a lot of comedy within all of your work. You know, you've never written anything where it's devoid of humor, even if it is on the bleep side. I feel that's part of your personality. You can't help but throw it in. Well, thank

David Dastmalchian 1:02:33
you. It's definitely one of the reasons why I reached out to my writing partner, Leah Kilpatrick, because I really wanted more to keep mining humor, and I always surround myself with writers and creators who are very strong with comedy, comedic timing, but yeah, it's a good way you get people to laugh, they breathe, they open their hearts, and then you can break them well. Thank you guys. This was really, really wonderful. I really appreciate it.

Michael David Wilson 1:03:00
Yeah, and there absolutely will be a chapter two, and for our listeners and for the viewers, we will go deep into late night with the devil that will be coming, because we have to do that for our horror fans. So don't you worry. This was the getting to know David episode, and we're going deep into the horror next time. So thank you so much, David,

David Dastmalchian 1:03:25
thank you guys so much. That was really wonderful. I really appreciate it. Stay tuned for your next episode is we go deeper and deeper into the horror, because this is horror.

Michael David Wilson 1:03:50
Thank you so much for listening to David Dastmalchian on This is horror. Join us again next time when we will be chatting to dangerous later, one of my favorite writers in the world. He is always such a funny guy, both on the page and off the page, and just endlessly entertaining. He's one of these writers that I really feel hasn't got the recognition that he should have. There's something very special about his horror adjacent bizarro works. And the working question that we were speaking primarily to danger about was, of course, the recently released starlet via ghoulish books. But goodness, there's so many other great things he's done, including house of rot, Moon fellows, little miss apocalypse. He digs a hole puppet skin, I will rot without you. I could go on really but dangerous later. He is an. Unsung hero in the horror world, and it was a delight to get him back on the show once again. And if you want to listen to that ahead of the crowd, and indeed, every other episode, if you also want to be submitting questions to each and every guest, and we have Wesley suffered coming up on the show very shortly. Then become our Patreon, a patreon.com forward slash. This is horror. Okay. Before I wrap up, a quick advert break

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Michael David Wilson 1:06:38
Now, another way that you can support the show is to leave a review over on the Apple podcast website. And if you want to support me directly, then do buy one of my books, or buy all of my books depends how well you get on with one of them, I suppose. And another thing you can do once you've read the book was to leave a review over on Goodreads and Amazon. I'm really hoping that we can get the girl in the video to 1000 ratings on Goodreads, because we're just over the 600 mark at the moment. So I want to push to get that 1000 milestone poor old house of bad memory is my most recent book, and potentially my favorite of all my books, that one I'm trying to get to the humble position of 100 ratings. So seems to have gone down very well, but not that many people are reviewing or rating it. So if you do have the chance, I would love you to do that over on Goodreads. But whether you do, whether you don't, I appreciate you reading my work. I appreciate you listening to the podcast, and on that note, I will see you in the next episode of dangerous later. So until then, take care of yourselves. Be good to one another. Read horror. Keep on writing and have a great, Great day.