S3E35: Beetlejuice Plus Crypt Keeper Equals Larry Wilson

The How NOT To Make A Movie Podcast

When Gil Adler and I took over HBO‘s iconic TALES FROM THE CRYPT at the start of its third season, one of our tasks was to reignite the series – or see it get cancelled. Crypt was a strange, hybrid creature. Today, talent moves easily from film projects to streaming TV projects and back. That didn’t happen in the mid-1990’s, when we made Crypt. The feature film world and the TV world didn’t mingle much (except for JOHNNY CARSON doing THE OSCARS). It wasn’t easy, but Crypt broke that rule. We merged features and TV every episode. So, it was both gratifying and instructive that we were able to attract a screenwriter like LARRY WILSON who had BEETLEJUICE and THE ADDAMS FAMILY to his screenwriting credit.

We had plenty of other feature film writers write scripts for Crypt. Few, if any, understood the show as intrinsically as Larry.

Larry grew up a huge fan of the EC Comics. His favorite movie was (and still is) the original BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN. He loved it because it wasn’t just scary, it was funny, too. Like Crypt.

With Beetlejuice Beetlejuice about to drop, Larry’s a wanted person! But, as he points out in the interview, Crypt was an important part of his career. That was the case for almost everyone who worked on Crypt. That means we’ll have Larry not once, but twice. In this episode, Larry will “stick to the “scrypt”. We’re going to talk pretty much Crypt from start to finish.

Larry will revisit us in a few episodes to talk about the great book he’s writing – a history of making Beetlejuice and a screenwriting textbook all rolled into one terrific entertainment! But, that’s the future. We’re here to talk about the past today – about Tales From The Crypt – and Beetlejuice’s co-creator, Larry Wilson!

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