Posted in: Audio Dramas, Movies, Sony, TV | Tagged: Amanda Bearse, Chris Sarandon, exclusive, fright night, interview, mark hamill, rosario dawson, Stephen Geoffreys, Table Read Podcast, tom holland, William Ragsdale

Fright Night Director Tom Holland on Cast Reunion Table Read Podcast

Fright Night director Tom Holland discussed the 40th anniversary cast reunion for Table Read Podcast with Mark Hamill and Rosario Dawson.

Writer and director Tom Holland has built such an impressive legacy in horror, working on franchises like Tales from the Crypt, Child's Play/Chucky, Psycho, and the screen adaptations of Stephen King's Thinner (1996) and The Langoliers. While he's still active writing, directing, and acting, Holland's pride and joy is 1985's Fright Night, the tale of a young Charley Brewster (William Ragsdale), who suspects his neighbor Jerry Dandridge (Chris Sarandon) is a vampire. While the police, his mother, his best friend, Evil Ed (Stephen Geoffreys), and his girlfriend Amy (Amanda Bearse) dismiss it as paranoia, Charley turns to TV host and horror actor Peter Vincent (Roddy McDowall, who passed in 1998) for help. Holland spoke to Bleeding Cool about collaborating with the Table Read Podcast for season two and reuniting the bulk of the surviving cast from the 1985 film for its 40th anniversary, recruiting Mark Hamill and Rosario Dawson, retconning the 1988 sequel with original projects like Fright Night: Resurrection, and thoughts on 2011's Craig Gillespie remake that starred Anton Yelchin and Colin Farrell.

Fright Night: How Tom Holland Is Expanding the Legacy of the Franchise

The legacy of 'Fright Night' and getting the cast back together for the Table Read podcast. What's that process been like?

The organization of it was difficult, but everybody was willing, but the cast was spread out. You got two people in Connecticut, Chris Sarandon, Billy Ragsdale, and Amanda Bearse off some island off the west coast of Florida. You have Evil Ed [played by] Stephen Geoffreys in San Francisco, but we had Billy Cole [played by] Jonathan Stark and Charlie's mother, Julie Brewster, in Dorothy Fielding in L.A. We had to bring everybody in and it's quite extensive because it's a table on Manifest Media that was the production side of it is a SAG signatory.

You must provide them with accommodation and transportation, it was quite an undertaking. Once we got everybody together, it was a joy, and a lot of fun and went smoothly. I hope it's a way to launch a 'Fright Night' series of dramatic podcasts. I'm following it up with a novel that I wrote called, 'Fright Night Resurrection: A Love Story.' It's about bringing Jerry Dandridge, Evil Ed, and Amy Peterson [ignoring 'Fright Night Part 2']. That's the one I hope is up next if we can get the word out on the cast reading.

It was an amazing experience, Tom. We had Mark Hamill filling in for Roddy McDowall as Peter Vincent, and we had Rosario Dawson playing several female parts, including the female vampire on the TV at the beginning. It was a lovely, thrilling experience with people not only during the original cast reading of the movie but also everybody was enjoying each other's presence. We set it up so everybody was seated at a table so everyone could make eye contact as they recited their lines. I hope we follow up with the 'Friday Night' original cast reunion with the continuation I'm running. I'm running two stories with a series and two books available on Amazon or my website covering what happens after the movie ends. I'm writing one set in the past and the other in the present. They'll interweave well, but we'll see.

Has the cast been receptive to maybe doing an animated version of this project? You also had Chris read the audiobook version of 'Fright Night: Origins.'

Everybody's enthusiastic about the project we're doing now. To do something else has to align with everybody's time constraints. The cast is busy during the horror convention time. Talking to Chris has been hard because he's already committed to several horror conventions back east. It's trying to work out everybody's schedule. When you deal with seven or eight successful actors continuing to work together, arranging the time will be difficult, so I don't have the answer yet. It will be hard for Chris to come in and read on Zoom. He goes out almost every weekend. Everybody was physically present for the cast reading, which comes out in July or August, and I hope we'll have 'Resurrection' out by October or November. I want to get 'Resurrection' out by Halloween.

You have the two stories coming out. One takes place directly after the events of the first movie, and the other one is 'Resurrection,' which is much later, right?

Yes, 'Resurrection' takes place where everybody plays their current age. I thought the cast reading was executed brilliantly. Things happen, like Amanda Bearse's Amy, as she read the 1985 script from the movie, her voice got younger [laughs]. It's a talented group, but 'Resurrection' would allow them to be more who they are today. What would it be like if 'Fright Night's' events came back on you as an adult, and how would you deal with that? You have an unresolved love story between Amy and Jerry Dandridge, which is what 'Fright Night Resurrection' is about.

Can you tell me how Mark Hamill and Rosario Dawson fit into the podcast?

Yes. Mark stood in for Roddy McDowall, and he was brilliant. He had worked with Roddy and did a movie with him in Great Britain ['Earth Angel' (1991)]. Mark's got a talented ear and picked up Roddy's Mid-Atlantic English accent. When the English come over here and stay for a long time, they don't sound like they're totally English anymore, but they don't sound American either, and Roddy had that. Mark's a talented voice actor.

What about Rosario?

Rosario read several different women. In the opening of 'Fright Night,' there's a female vamp on the TV, an old-fashioned Hammer horror film. The vampiress, I forget her name, seduces the young male lead, Jonathan. Rosario played that part, and she played the female newscaster and female police officer. She's lovely to have around. She's so enthusiastic, and she knows funny. The original 'Fright Night' script that I wrote has a lot of humor, so when anyone was funny during the cast reading, Rosario broke up, which only encouraged them. Since you had everybody together in one recording studio, there was the spirited, give and take among them. It brought it alive where everybody was zooming in and doing their parts. You wouldn't have it. As I said, it's difficult getting the actors together in one place. They all came back with their original cast reading. None wanted to miss that. We'll see how we're doing with 'Resurrection.'

If it becomes an animated series, do you hope it will be available on a streaming service, or are you waiting to see how it turns out?

The latter, because ideally, I'd like to see it become successful as a dramatic podcast, and then Sony, which has the film and TV rights, says, "Hey, let's do a streaming series of this, and let's use our actors, the ones that are doing the reading." As 'Resurrection' reflects their current age, they wouldn't have to recast them with younger actors.

There was a 2011 remake of 'Fright Night' with Anton Yelchin and Colin Farrell, and I was wondering if you had any thoughts on whether you felt it built on the franchise's legacy.

That's a difficult question. The remake didn't reflect many of the same values the original did. Since I wrote and directed the original, I prefer the original. It's a talented cast in the remake, and the production values were terrific in the direction, but I didn't like what they did with Peter Vincent. At the heart of 'Fright Night,' the hero's journey is Peter Vincent, the horror host, [and the films] I grew up on. It is my love letter to horror fans everywhere, circa 1984. When I grew up in the early '60s, you couldn't watch horror films on TV. You only had them on a Friday night on a local channel, the "Friday Night Frights," and they always had a host who was wonderful and goofy, as you can imagine, like Elvira, Stagger Lee, Count Gore de Vol, whoever.

They would always be in a graveyard with a fog machine, and somehow, you always saw the tech blowing the fog in, and the tombstones were papier Mache. It was great fun, and that's what 'Fright Night' and Roddy McDowall's Peter Vincent, the host of 'Fright Night' is. The character that makes it go is Billy Ragsdale's Charley Brewster, who knows there's a vampire next door, and nobody believes him.

You can check out the Table Read Podcast for more, including a copy of Holland's script to read along. New episodes are available on your favorite podcast platforms, like iHeartRadio, Apple Podcasts, and Spotify. You can check out the first episode below and Holland's site, Terror Time.

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