At Death's Altar: an Interview with Philip Fracassi

BY AARON J. FRENCH J. BY AARON At Death’s Altar: An Interview with Philip Fracassi Photo courtesy of Bethany Gilberston aron J. French: Thanks for chatt ing with us. Could bookstore and art gallery in Venice Beach, founded and A you tell our readers a litt le about your personal back- operated a publishing company, and have worked on and ground and your work in the entertainment industry? off in fi lm & TV production for, well, a long time. Living in the Los Angeles area, our number one commodity is enter- Philip Fracassi: Thanks for having me in this amazing tainment, so a good percentage of folks work, in one way magazine! or another, with fi lm and television. Currently I split my In regards to my background, yes, absolutely. I’ve time between writing and working as a Location Manager, always been a writer. I started writing stories in third grade which means I help fi nd and secure any “real” location a and never stopped. Since I was a big reader of Stephen show might need for fi lming, be it a city sidewalk, an offi ce King, Dean Koontz and Clive Barker, I eventually took my building, a house, or an amusement park. Whatever they fi rst crack at writing horror in the seventh grade and fell need to get the scene. It can be a very interesting occupa- in love with the genre. I continued writing, albeit with var- tion, and it’s a lot of fun to work on the big studio lots. ied directions. During the aughts, I primarily wrote liter- Plus, working freelance means I can take off to write when ary fi ction, hundreds of stories and three novels, a sort of needed, which is a key perk, for sure. literary trilogy—“The Egotist,” “Don’t Let Them Get You Down,” and “Happy Holly.” “The Egotist” was self-pub- AJF: You’ve done some screenwriting. Tell us about that. lished and is currently out of print, although I did recently fashion a Kindle e-book which is available online. I’m hop- PF: I sort of fell into screenwriting. Being a writer in Los ing all three novels will see the light of day, because I’ll Angeles, it’s a natural occupation to att empt, but it’s such likely never write straight literary fi ction again. Enjoying a brutal and overwhelmingly well-populated fi eld that it horror too much now to turn back, for bett er or worse. is very hard to fi nd and maintain any success. I was lucky Writing aside, I have quite a varied background—I’ve enough to catch a break writing movies for children that been a music executive, a security guard, I owned a rare involved talking dogs, and one of those movies, “Santa 65 Fall/2016 Paws 2: The Santa Pups,” from Disney Entertainment, was and brutal prose, and MR James for his ability to create a my first credited writing job. This was in 2011. In the five sensation of creepy, yet somehow formal, dread. More cur- years since, I’ve focused all of my efforts on writing hor- rently, Ralph Robert Moore for his intense physicality, and ror and supernatural-themed scripts, one of which sold in lastly Laird Barron, for teaching me that prose can infil- 2014 to Lifetime Television, a thriller called “Girl Missing,” trate the subconscious and, while visiting, do some fairly starring Francesca Eastwood. It’s currently on demand via significant damage. I once said, after reading Barron’s “the Amazon and iTunes. I’m still writing screenplays and am worms crawl in,” that he was a linguistic acrobat, and I still in development on a new thriller called “Vintage,” which hold that he can do things with words that no other writer will hopefully go into production later in 2016. So keep an can. It’s okay to call it genius. eye out for that one. AJF: Let’s talk about your 2016 novella “Altar” published AJF: You create an inter- by Dunhams Manor Press. esting atmosphere with This is an awesome read. your writing. Which How did this story come authors most influenced about? your craft? Why? PF: Let me start by saying PF: Thank you for saying my stories would not have so. Let me start by say- seen the light of day were ing that screenwriting is, it not for Jordan Krall and quite obviously, a visual his excellent press, Dynatox medium. There are very Ministries. He was an early few abstract thoughts, hid- adopter of my work, and den actions, pontifications leads the charge of indepen- or philosophizing, in a dent presses finding won- screenplay. It’s Character, derful new authors. Action, Dialogue, Setting. Regarding “Altar,” it’s So I think my work in hard to discuss without screenwriting has allowed giving too much away, but me to visualize, in a some- as with most of my story what unique way, the ideas, it really just popped scenes taking place dur- into my head one day, ing my stories. In turn, at least the core concept. my hunch is that my Sometimes, for me at least, stories—although prose- I’ll just be looking at some- fueled and often filled thing—in this case I was with inner-thoughts and gazing lazily at a swimming descriptive passages— pool—and a dark finger maintain a strong visual will poke my brain and I’ll element for the reader, think, “What if?” And that simply because that’s the “what if” is usually, uh, way I’ve been trained something fairly awful and, to express myself in my likely, supernatural, in the work. sense that it would never As far as tone, I like to really happen. Would it? think of myself as “old- But from that core idea school horror meets the comes the flowering of all new weird,” the combi- the other ideas that go into nation of which can cre- it. In this case, I wanted that ate some interesting textures, for sure. “Altar” is a prime core idea—a fairly implausible, but not totally unrealistic, example. disaster—to be something much bigger, something the- In regards to authors, I’ve said before that there is a dif- matic and, as I said, supernatural. I thought a lot about the ference between authors I enjoy reading and authors who loss of innocence, and about shining a light on the awful influence my work, whether it be the stories themselves or things that happen in the darkest corners of childhood. the way I write them. While I enjoy hundreds if not thou- Then it was just a matter of creating some different per- sands of authors, there are very few I draw from that have spectives, adding a dash of family drama and a pinch of affected my prose. nostalgia and, Viola! Horror. Those who have influenced me, then: from a literary standpoint, I’d say William Faulkner, for the liquidity of AJF: One of the things I like about your writing is that his sentences and phrases, Ernest Hemingway for his blunt you don’t shy away from addiction, family problems, Dark Discoveries 66 dysfunction—that sort of thing. It seems a common theme AJF: You have another novella out with Dunhams Manor in your stories. Is it deliberate? Press called “Mother” (2015). Tell us a little about that one. Do you prefer novellas as a format to novels? PF: It’s not deliberate, and I’m not sure where it stems from. I had a very standard, happy childhood. I have two PF: “Mother” is the story of what a marriage can become loving parents and a big family of very well-off, stable when neither member has fully established their person- folks. So your guess is as good as mine. alities, their goals and their life ambitions. They have not I will say that I have a tendency to champion the fully become the person they are going to be, in other children. I enjoy writing from a kid’s perspective, but in words. They’re not done changing. Into what? Well, that’s a mature, complex way. I like giving kids a voice, a real the surprise, and often not a pleasant one. voice. Maybe it’s because I have a teenager, but there’s Whether it be from marrying too young, or being definitely a part of me fooled by the other per- that wants to explore the son’s personality, mar- complexities, real emo- riages are often traps tions and incredible suf- rather than unions. fering and decisions we That said, this is really make while growing up. the core idea, and what The contrast between sprouted from that bitter, narrow-minded, germ was something calloused adults and the much more sinister wide-open, sponge-like and monstrous. optimism and fear of a Ultimately, child is a sandbox I cer- “Mother” is about that tainly enjoy playing in. dark night when you’re Things like dysfunction lying in bed next to and addiction exacer- the person you’re sup- bate those relationships, posed to love, sup- among other catalysts, posed to know better so that’s likely why they than anyone else in the rear their ugly heads. world; but when you There’s a lot of truth reach out your hand to to horror, and I think touch them, something that’s one of the things different lies there, that makes it so damn something you have no important. understanding of, and now you have to live AJF: “Altar” is a cool with that person, and blend of vintage ’80s bear the subsequent with Lovecraftian consequences.

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