the meme of ween, nicked from vali

[phosfate]

1. Name the three movies that have frightened you the most. Feel free to explain why.

The Blair Witch Project. Seen properly in a theater, it's mean and evil and bad. God bless it.

Fantasia. Except that the Ave Maria part scared me a hundred times more than Night on Bald Mountain. What the hell's wrong with me?

Threads. Major nuke-mare brought to life - made even scarier by knowing that the reality would be much worse.

2. Do you have an irrational fear?

Swarming carpenter ants. Except I've actually been bothered by swarming carpenter ants, so I'm not sure it qualifies as irrational.

3. What is the scariest book you have ever read?

I read Amphigorey by Edward Gorey when I was 10 or 11, and it was insidious and horrible and induced anxiety attacks. Naturally I checked it out every couple of months.

4. Have you ever seen a film or read a book that frightened you so much you couldn't finish it?

Clive Barker's Books of Blood. I picked up a copy for Shawn once, and the opening epigraph managed to both gross me out and annoy the shit out of me. Sorry, Clive.

I nearly walked out of Cronenberg's version of The Fly, but that was due more to nearly upchucking than fear.

5. Was there something that frightened you as a child that seems silly now? (For example, a weird shape outside your window, or a character in a movie.)

The Wicked Witch of the West. The Gorilla on that Gilligan's Island episode. Letting your hand or bare foot dangle out from under the bedclothes. Certain spots in the neighborhood that were inherently evil. Churches.

6. Have you ever had any encounters with anything paranormal? Seen a ghost, used a Ouija board, had a precognitive dream?

I saw (except that's the wrong verb) a ghost at Susan's old house. Also, for reasons that have always escaped me (as did reasons for much of his behavior), Dad came back and bombed the house with Lime Old Spice. Really bugged the poor dog.

I've had precognitive dreams, but they're invariably my subconscious leaving me a note based on already-acquired information.

7. If you made your own horror movie or wrote a horror story/novel, what would it be about?

I don't want to think about it right now. You're wiggin' me out here.

8. If you could be (or should I say had to be) any creature of the night (e.g., a vampire, a werewolf), what would you be?

I gotta go with Vali on this one and say a ghost. Versatility, as she said, plus wide latitude in the dress code and unlimited free travel.

9. If you could communicate in a direct way with one deceased person personally known to you, who would it be?

Um...pass.

10. If you could communicate in a direct way with one deceased person *not* personally known to you, who would it be?

Oscar Wilde, if he's not too busy.

Comments

[spinooti.livejournal.com]

I read Amphigorey when I was about seven or eight. I already had a knowledge of Edward Gorey because my bedtime was normally when Mystery! came on, and that theme music and that animation was always going when I went to sleep... scared the bejeesus out of me.

But because of that, I had no fear left for Edward Gorey when I finally found one of his books, and accordingly thought it freaking awesome. He is entirely responsible for my love of limericks.

I always though The Object Lesson was the coolest thing ever written. I read it in class in the seventh grade when we had to bring in a poem. This served to cement everyone's opinion of me as the resident genial weirdo.

[pollyannadesade.livejournal.com]

I'd like to talk to Oscar's crazy niece Dolly. She rocked. Or Wallis Windsor, for fashion passion.

I'd love Oscar more if he hadn't given up at the end. I want to scream at him like, "you were right dammit, so why did you give them the satisfaction of making you a victim?" I know people like martyrs but... Meh, at least he had it to piss it away, more than most manage...

[annlarimer.livejournal.com]

Sometimes I feel that way, too. Prison broke his health, I think.

[pollyannadesade.livejournal.com]

You're right there.

But then I think about Joe Orton, and the similarities between them - a total outsider, got sent to prison, got murdered by his boyfriend! - but he never said he was sorry and stayed sexydangerous to the end. And he was just as clever and erudite and eternal, maybe.

It's cause I like Oscar that I want him to be a fighter. I get depressed when people give up, it scares me a bit, I think. It dosen't seem right that he didn't get vindicated.

I heard a record that's supposed to be a contemorary recording of him reading The Ballad of Reading Gaol. If it is him, he had an echoey voice, it sounded so sad, poor lovely man. Bastards, eh?

[annlarimer.livejournal.com]

Well, part of the injustice of the thing is that there's no way Oscar could have been vindicated. He was, after all, guilty - it's just that he was guilty of something that ought never to have been a crime in the first place, and to us is as puzzling as if he'd gone to jail for spitting.

(Well actually spitting is totally disgusting and spitters should be taken out and maimed, but that's just me.)

I don't think it's fair to compare Joe and Oscar too closely. Oscar did labor, the sort of stuff that today would be considered unthinkable even in the U.S. Others had it worse, but picking oakum was nasty, painful and pointless. He was ill most of the time, and (if I recall rightly) didn't get sufficient food. Joe certainly didn't have fun in jail, but he mainly had to deal with yer standard fistfights and shower gropes - stuff that proto-punk Joe was well used to dealing with. And by Joe's time law and mores were changing, and Oscar was a hero instead of someone whose name could not be mentioned even on the programs of his own plays.

One wonders if things might have been different if Oscar had simply challenged that assclown Queensbury to a duel.

[pollyannadesade.livejournal.com]

That's true enough, but also you have to consider Kenneth - I know he was unbalanced before being incarcerated, but it really broke him - he felt the shame of it in a way Joe didn't - which is kind of odd, since it was sort of his fault in the first place that they were inside... So though their experience wasn't as bad as Oscar's, it was enough to crumple Halliwell, though Joe emerged OK...

I wish we did know why Oscar prosecuted. Rather than the reasons he gave at the time.

Spitters are nasty! Except for camels...

[annlarimer.livejournal.com]

I so completely don't get poor Kenneth. So many conflicting accounts of what he was like (from people who were much more interested in Joe) that it makes my head hurt.

I liked his book defacing, however. Definitely worth a *splorfle!*

[roxann-ireland.livejournal.com]

Can I just pause for a moment and tell you how much I love you all for this conversation? Good Lord!

I think there are some real notable differences between Orton and Wilde, both in their response to prison and in general. The nature of their prisons were enormously different--Orton's prison experience is the one we think of, yards, showers, etc. Wilde was kept in complete isolation 23 hours a day. He was not allowed to speak to the guards. He was not allowed reading materials. In the one hour a day he was allowed out with other prisoners, they marched silently in a circle. The punishment for speaking was a beating. Aside from physical circumstances of bad food, inadequate clothing and bedding, and lack of exposure to light, can you imagine what two years with no one to talk to must have done to a man like Wilde? It's too terrible to even think about.

Also, the class difference is an important factor. Being an anonymous working-class boy and going to prison is different than being an internationally famous author going to prison. Farther to fall, and greater stigma when he emerged.

[roxann-ireland.livejournal.com]

Joe Orton benefits from dying young and at the peak of his career. I've got to wonder how Orton would be remembered if he had lived long enough to be involved in a pedophile scandal (he was very fond of 13-15 year old boys) or run a few rounds with drug addiction. He benefits from what I call the James Dean Effect--you get all the glory for what people believe what you would have done without having to do it or run the risk of failing. If you want to see the reverse of this compare public memory of James Dean with public opinion of Marlon Brando.

But I do agree with you that Orton had a bedrock vigor that Wilde seems to have lacked. Orton was a fighter; Wilde was a suicide artist.

[ex-verdandi713.livejournal.com]

What's a good beginner's biography of Wilde and Company?

[annlarimer.livejournal.com]

Beginner's? Oh, jeez, there's a ton of servicable and entertaining books on Wilde that come in at well under 200 pages. I'd just go to the library and pick the one with the pictures that you like best, and it'll get you on your feet.

When you're ready for the hard stuff (all the cool kids are doing it), Richard Ellmann's biography (known as "the big-ass silver fucker" in literary circles, or at least in bookstore stockperson circles) is as good as it gets. Follow it with The Stranger Wilde: Interpreting Oscar by Gary Schmidgall, which comments on Ellman.

Stay away from that lying fucker Frank Harris. He was the Bob Crane of his day.

[suzyd.livejournal.com]

My answers to those questions would be amazingly sad. Here are some highlights:

1. I so agree with you on The Blair Witch Project. When it attacked them in the tent I wigged out. Hard to rank other movies, I mainly remember individual moments. Like the low speed/high speed ghost movements in House on Haunted Hill. Eeee!

3. Some Pick-A-Path style horror story in a horror-based magazine that I read at midnight by torchlight. Making the decisions makes it seem so much more personal.

5. Some scene from Snow White when I was little. How sad is that?

7. I reckon fear is worst if everybody thinks you're irrational, so something that only one person can see. Generalised bump in the night stuff, no particular baddie that parades around for all to see.

10. Freddy Mercury - what did he think of that last album?

[annlarimer.livejournal.com]

1. To be the awfullest thing in BWP was the sound - the baby crying, the faraway thuds, etc. It's one of the few movies that makes me wish we had surround sound at home. And the other great thing about it is, when you're not in the mood to watch it lights-down, it's totally MSTable.

3. Now that you mention it, a lame story called "The Man with Red Eyes" in an ancient Scholastic paperback that a teacher read out loud to us scared the holy living shit out of me when I was 9 or 10.

10. I'm also scared of Freddy Mercury.

Re:

[suzyd.livejournal.com]

1. I know. The sounds are all because half the time you can't see anything. MSTable?

3. What's also scary is the ones that are meant to be real-life stories. I had a big old book of "real life" ghost stories when I was young. Oh, and one with all other kinds of stuff, like the Marie Celeste. Freaky.

10. Not a queen fan? Or just scared by the giant penis-hat he once wore? ;)

[cageyklio.livejournal.com]

Coincidentally enough, I got home to discover that someone sent me a hardcover Amphigorey Too. ::happy dance::

[annlarimer.livejournal.com]

And fun was had by Cagey that night!

[bittercat.livejournal.com]

1. Edward Gorey is THE BEST. My fave? "The Ghastleycrumb Tinies." LOL!

2. The very ending of "Blair Witch" scared me, but the movie was a sorry POS, and the sequel was just insulting.

3. I love ghosts. I'm REALLY into ghosts.

[annlarimer.livejournal.com]

I wouldn't see BWP2 on a bet. It looks totally skankified.

[theodicy.livejournal.com]

Mr. Wilde's backlog of appointments is currently twenty-four months. His personal secretary is very good about taking messages, though.

[annlarimer.livejournal.com]

Groovy. I shall write for an appointment.

[roxann-ireland.livejournal.com]

I suppose the chances of getting him in a conference call with Orton are pretty small.