MAD: Rommi, thanks for taking some time today to catch up! Please allow me to set the stage. We first met about 10 years ago, through a mutual friend, and aside from music I think we connected due to our love of horror. In particular, we are both in agreement that THE EXORCIST is one of the greatest achievements in cinema. We also have a deep appreciation for the works of Stephen King, in particular, the various connections through THE DARK TOWER. Would you care to elaborate a little bit on the value and importance of the original EXORCIST?
ROMMI: The Exorcist as a cultural phenomenon is paramount in the genre, because as both a truly terrifying and highly esteemed film, it legitimizes horror not only as art, but as philosophy. The book is my second favorite novel, and I strongly recommend William Peter Blatty’s sequel Legion because it follows more of the underlying theme of the original through the lens of the detective’s Dostoyevsky-influenced point of view. There are some passages just following the detective’s thoughts, flowing prose dripping with existential meaning that I would classify as esoteric.
That’s also what made me fall in love with The Gunslinger, Stephen King’s first Dark Tower book. I was twelve when I read it, and the palaver between Roland and the Man in Black at the end of the book literally changed my life, awakened me to my deeper calling as a philosopher. I had wanted to be a writer since I was able to read, but it only really occurred to me then that what I really was and was perhaps doomed to be was a thinker, and I could identify with Roland’s impossible quest immediately.
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MAD: What are some of your other all-time favorite horror books and films?
ROMMI: There’s no way I could give an exhaustive list, so I want to name some lesser-known stuff that I’d like to see people visit for the first time if they haven’t already: The Face That Must Die by Ramsey Campbell is a visceral literary experience. Campbell’s work in general is worth the time, because I know of few writers who, instead of goading the reader forward, drag us through the story by our hair. The Parasite was another good one of his.
The short stories of Poppy Z. Brite and Al Sarrantonio are among the best I’ve read.
As for film, The Shrine from 2010 was just a blip on the radar, but an underappreciated piece that I think people should check out.
I love all the classics, of course, from the Universal monsters to Hammer to the 80s slashers.
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MAD: You’ve contributed a lot of great material to the website over the past several months, and it’s definitely appreciated! What does “horror” mean to you, and what would you like to see happen with HORROR TO CULTURE in the future?
ROMMI: I appreciated the invitation to contribute and have enjoyed exploring the philosophy of Horror with you!
As a philosopher, I have learned that the primary focus of my calling is to disrupt automated processes. Why should this be? Well, I have come to suspect that there are genes in the evolutionary pool set there as a failsafe against complacency and stagnation, and that this is the purpose of my compulsive inquisitiveness, to prod at the other hairless apes to get them to notice fatal discrepancies to which they would otherwise turn a blind eye. It is of interest to note that this is an evolutionary benefit for the species… but not necessarily for the philosopher. How bad the philosopher’s lot is depends, of course, on how sore or humiliating is the particular spot we must poke. Some of us, like Socrates, are forced to drink the hemlock by a culture who are ungrateful for the service, though others may fare better. It is not for us to decide.
Therefore, my primary attraction to horror has always been that it makes us look at things we would otherwise not seek out, and sometimes, if it’s done especially well, at the most jarring, illuminating moments. The Exorcist comes to mind again here.
As for Horror to Culture, I think we should consider highlighting the works of Peter Straub, to complete the trifecta of great 80s horror novelists. Horror literature was at its most popular in the 1980s, I think. King, Barker, and Straub were at the forefront, and we’ve already done King and Barker!
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MAD: You are one of the few people that I personally know, whom I would consider a “prolific” writer. You have authored many pieces through your own social media pages, both fiction and non-fiction. You even published your own book of poetry a few years ago (congrats!). What keeps you inspired and motivated to push forward with writing?
ROMMI: I often joke that its like that scene in Quills where Geoffrey Rush plays the Marquis de Sade, and at the end, when they try to take away all his writing tools, he cuts himself and writes on the prison walls in blood… Could I stop if I wanted to? Why would I want to anyway, especially if stopping was going to gain me nothing?
For me, it became a spiritual pursuit, to the point that I discovered that time for writing my thoughts down was essential to my mental and physical health. I have the very real experience, and from a young age, not just of creating from my imagination but of interfacing with something both beyond and within myself.
Some write for an audience. Some write for themselves. I write to interface with that third thing, whatever it is, and I respect it as something real, even if it is only a state of mind.
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MAD: How did the creation of your book THIS TREE (2021) come about?
ROMMI: The title poem was a reflection on grief, but the final essay, Percy Shelley and Bad Jubies, was a reflection on Shelley’s A Defense of Poetry, where he makes the case that “Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world.” The poems and essays in the book are published from least to greatest word count. I hoped that as the reader went on, they would feel as if they were being eased from lighter into denser thought, culminating in my meditation on Shelley and why poetry, and art, are so vital to our development.
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MAD: Of all the articles, essays, and short stories you’ve released, is there any specific one you are most proud of, or which you think is a good starting point for readers who might be interested in digging through your work?
ROMMI: Start here at Horror to Culture with my article Talking Schop with Slenderman! I’m proud of that one because it offers a logical refutation of a common belief which I find damaging: the assumption that good feelings and good actions are necessarily connected.
I have a lot of good stuff on Vocal too, and my Substack, The Cynickal Art, is only just rolling; and, of course, This Tree is still available through multiple booksellers. It’s a slim volume, so a good introductory piece.
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MAD: Who are a few of your literary “heroes”?
ROMMI: Edgar Allen Poe, first and foremost. Hermann Hesse. Emily Dickinson. King, Barker, and Straub. Ray Bradbury. Friedrich Nietzsche, as a stylist, is perhaps the most profoundly clever writer in history, regardless of what anyone thinks of his philosophy. Robert E. Howard and H.P. Lovecraft, because I love the mythos they created. Alan Moore and Neil Gaiman redefined comics as a literary medium, and their respective approaches to storytelling were positive influences, even if Moore now feels less than thrilled about it. Shirley Jackson and Richard Matheson deserve mention. There are so many!
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MAD: If you could revive/reboot/relaunch one horror franchise, which would it be? How would you do it?
ROMMI: Friday the 13th. I love the original movie as a story but was never satisfied with the way they introduced Jason in part 2, implying he didn’t drown after all, but grew up in the woods after watching his mother get killed. The vision of the boy jumping from the lake was so visceral, and I always felt Jason should be undead from the beginning of the saga.
I would reboot the original so that Jason’s mother was still the killer, but where her actions were the manifestation of an ancient evil that revives the dead Jason at the bottom of the lake and quickens his body into the hulking monstrosity we all know and love. I wrote a comic book script on that idea in 2013 called Friday the 13th: Soul’s Legacy with the intention of shopping it to Avatar Press, which had the rights at that time, but by the time I finished the script, Jason’s comic rights went to DC, which is inaccessible to working schmucks like me who aren’t already in the business. But if anyone who could greenlight a Friday reboot ever wanted to work with me on that, I’d likely jump at the chance!
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MAD: Are there any new horror movies that you’re looking forward to over the remainder of the year?
ROMMI: I’m really more interested in visiting the backlog of stuff that I have yet to get around to, as well as revisiting and reconsidering some old friends, like I did with The Thing a while back. My kids like the genre too, so it’s been fun going back to the oldies with them. We especially had a blast working through the Halloween franchise, including the newest ones. There’s so much out there and I divide my time between so many things that it’s hard to get excited about any one thing anymore. Modern culture has become a sort of short attention span theater just on account of the plethora of options always at our disposal. I sometimes lament that I can no longer feel the joy of only being able to pick from a handful of movies on the shelf at the video store. The oversaturation of media takes away that treasure hunt element that I recall experiencing on those jaunts to pick out a game, a comic, a movie, a book, an album.
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MAD: What advice would you give to the struggling artist/writer/musician out there?
ROMMI: Our real struggle as artists is not the seminal act, which is almost always pure pleasure, even when it is agony—no, our struggle is to promote our work, and more so for those of us willing to take chances, to challenge the prospective audience with a mind to tell the truth, even if through fiction. I can’t tell anyone how to make money doing this, and I’m not sure that in this new digital landscape that there is any one technique for that anymore, because it looks like an ever-spinning roulette wheel to me, and to pander too much to the algorithm, as SEO placement and other modern marketing strategies would have us do, would seem to me to compromise the integrity of the art.
So I advise that you do it for the love of the art and for no other reason, and you’ll find something more valuable than all the money in the world.
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MAD: Rommi, once again it’s been good talking with you, and I hope we can grab another beer again soon! Is there anything you’d like to leave readers with today, perhaps a quote?
ROMMI: Pete Bogdanovich paraphrases his mentor Orson Welles:
“No story has a happy ending unless you stop telling it before it's over.”
Orson Welles actually said:
“If you want a happy ending, that depends, of course, on where you stop your story.”
Subtle differences in interpretation become wide gaps in understanding.
