Wednesday, February 13, 2008

American Network Psycho

File this news under: JA's head was up his ass again. I'm not sure how I'd missed news of this series-to-be Fear Itself, which is basically an NBC version of Showtime's Masters of Horror, meaning an anthology show of hour-long horror films, each made by a different director. MoH's hit-or-miss ratio had veered so far into strictly miss territory that I sorta gave up after watching maybe five or six episodes scattered through its run, but this new series, against the odds, has got me excited.

First off, why "against the odds"? Well silly, it's airing on NBC, which means there won't be nearly as much pushing of the envelope, at least violence-wise, as was allowed on Showtime. No aborted fetuses floating downstream here! This could be seen as a positive as well - perhaps it'll force the filmmakers selected to direct episodes to get more creative with their scares, and not rely on just amped-up gore. I'm all for the subtle scares, too. We'll see.

But secondly, and most importantly, the reason I'm actually really excited is the list of filmmakers BD just released for the show's first season. Specifically one wonderful name. Oh yes, there's John Carpenter and Stuart "Re-Animator" Gordon and Brad "Session 9" Anderson, all of which are mighty fantastic, but it's Mary freaking Harron who's got me the most thrilled.

Yes, Mary Harron, director of the already-a-classic American Psycho, as well as the wonderful The Notorious Bettie Page. Genius Mary Harron. Doing a single-hour horror episode for network TV! Glee!

There's so much awesome to be had in that it doesn't know what to do with all the awesome. It's pouring awesome out of its ears. It's calling 911 on an awesome phone because it's drowning in awesome and needs awesome CPR.

Harron's got some TV experience under her belt - she's done an episode of Oz, an episode of Six Feet Under, an episode of Homicide and The L Word and Big Love and... well, she's done a lot of single episodes, basically. But the only horror I see on her resume is American Psycho... and that's the only time you'll ever here me refer to AP as a singular, stand-alone achievement. AP gives her a lifetime guarantee of my devotion. So while we wait for her to get another feature film up and running, this'll do.

All this talk of American Psycho and not one picture of Christian Bale? Not gonna happen...

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1 comment:

Glenn Dunks said...

Yeah, American Psycho is genius. I jumped outta my seat with excitement when I saw the opening credits of her episode of Six Feet Under. "Mary Harron? OMG!"

For me it's my third favourite film this decade (so far), which is no small achievement.