The Masters of Horror Discuss Their Biggest Inspirations | The Dick Cavett Show
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 5 ก.พ. 2025
- Stephen King (The Shining) George A. Romero (Dawn of The Dead) Ira Levin (Rosemary's Baby) and Peter Straub (Ghost Story) discuss their biggest horror inspirations.
Date aired - October 16, 1980 - Stephen King, Ira Levin, George Romero and Peter Straub
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Dick Cavett has been nominated for eleven Emmy awards (the most recent in 2012 for the HBO special, Mel Brooks and Dick Cavett Together Again), and won three. Spanning five decades, Dick Cavett’s television career has defined excellence in the interview format. He started at ABC in 1968, and also enjoyed success on PBS, USA, and CNBC.
His most recent television successes were the September 2014 PBS special, Dick Cavett’s Watergate, followed April 2015 by Dick Cavett’s Vietnam. He has appeared in movies, tv specials, tv commercials, and several Broadway plays. He starred in an off-Broadway production ofHellman v. McCarthy in 2014 and reprised the role at Theatre 40 in LA February 2015.
Cavett has published four books beginning with Cavett (1974) and Eye on Cavett (1983), co-authored with Christopher Porterfield. His two recent books -- Talk Show: Confrontations, Pointed Commentary, and Off-Screen Secrets (2010) and Brief Encounters: Conversations, Magic moments, and Assorted Hijinks(October 2014) are both collections of his online opinion column, written for The New York Times since 2007. Additionally, he has written for The New Yorker, TV Guide, Vanity Fair, and elsewhere.
#thedickcavettshow
God, this is like horror royalty being interviewed by talk show royalty.
The best meets the best. It's awesome
That is exactly what it is
It's great to see these wicked and insane minds seem so eerily normal. I love seeing artists whose demeanour is so far divorced from the kind of creations they create.
this TH-cam channel is A+++.... this panel is basically the ‘27 yankees of that era’s horror/thriller
The thing that I love about Stephen King is how well-versed he is in his genre. While some of these guys seem like they had outside literary aspirations and came almost accidentally to horror, King has an encyclopedic knowledge of these old pulp writers. You can always see that he is as big of a horror fan as he is a horror writer.
Yeah he's like the Quentin Tarantino of horror
Hear how calming their tones are? The show bleeds serenity. What a difference a couple of decades make.
i like cavett more and more when i watch his interviews - here in the uk the famous interviewer was Parkinson, but a lot of the time he just seems to smarm and schmooze the guest into talking about themselves (or just their latest project). cavett really seems to know his stuff - he's either a fan, admirer whatever but he's amazingly well read and has done his research. then he manages to connect with his subject on a person-person level that brings the interview above the usual old guff
Ohh man, it took me a while to recognize george romero, he is so young in this.
What a great discussion. Especially love that Ira Levin was part of this.
Yesss!!
I love seeing old interviews with George A Romero (RIP), a true Maverick of Film, The King Of The Zombies! 💀📽
Good lord.. so many literature legends all in one place. Amazing.
Ah yes my favorite author, George Romero
Fleming Barto I thought he was a movie director ;-)
This is from 1980, during the time Cavett suffered through an intense bout of depression. Hindsight is always 20/20 but you can see he's not quite himself. Good to know he ultimately pulled through.
*How the hell did we go from awesome, content driven, classy talk shows like this to the crap we have today???*
People got dumber, and the WASPs who were in charge of television were replaced
I heard you could do a really great Al Pacino impression!
Spot On
If you wanna hear content that's similar to this nowadays - your best bet is to get into podcasts.
technology
Ira Levin 🐐
This was back in the days when there was true talent. Peter Straub, may he rest in peace. He is my favorite of the group.
I always forget that George didn't always have his giant grandma glasses.
Straight up
It's obvious watching this now, that TV has been intentionally dumbed down. This kind of discussion only exists now on the fringes in podcasts. Why don't TV programmers seek to fill this obvious void?
Because it would conflict with our fascist indoctrination systems. A lot of tax payer dollars were sacrificed so that we'd accept sacrificing ourselves for private profits.
But they're making a new Jersey Shore, so..
To keep your average sheep dumb👍🏼
Any podcast recommendations?
@@nicolenepotgieter8725 corbettreport
Because the people in charge of tv are morons and like shiny things and assume us plebs are like them and don’t know anything or have any curiosity
2:33 George Romero is about to say something really interesting about Richard Matheson, which is what Cavett asked about in the first place, when Stephen King interrupts him to blather about a Spielberg movie that he liked. And now we'll NEVER KNOW what Romero was about to say. Still I would love to be in the room with all of these guys talking tradecraft like this. Wow
Agree, completely-a lost opportunity. King blabs too damn much and Ira Levin was unfortunately not given enough chat time. I would have loved for Cavett to have queried him on “This Perfect Day” (1970) since The novel is a direct reflection of our current and horrid state of affairs in this world.
. I'm an Ira Levin fan. Would have loved to have heard him explain his inspirations for his books. Especially "A Kiss Before Dying".
Romero was probably going to say that Mathesons novel, I Am Legend was the inspiration for Night of the Living Dead. Romero has mentioned this before.
Stephen King goes with Richard Matheson. Absolutely goddamn right! Now, I'm off to watch Duel on Blu-ray to remind me how much I love that great storyteller.
Matheson and later the now late, great master Dennis Etchison, exemplified a kind of American (and Californian/western) Gothic, quite a bit more modern and rooted in
everyday American life than most of the "classic" horror authors such as HPL or M. R. James (not American), and even more so than someone like Shirley Jackson,
although she was absolutely a major influence on King and Straub and many others. Matheson and Etchison often exemplify a kind of "daylight" horror, rooted more in the
mundane and banal of American life, shot through with a good dose of paranoia. Plus King doesn't mention here that HPL's stories always retain New England as the primary
center of their focus, his own version of New England Gothic tradition, married to his cosmic horror vision. Lovecraft rarely used Europe as a setting or focus. Though
HPL would also sometimes touch on this theme of "everyday" or "daylight" horror, such as in his early tale "Cool Air." Though usually Lovecraft wasn't concerned with the mundane,
and his "Mythos" and its scares are tied to the notion that humans have no control, there is no God, but there are forces/entities in the universe which look at us like we're spots of dust, etc.
Which is why a master like Ramsey Campbell can bust out a stupendous collection of horror tales (initially) rooted in "mundane" everyday life such as Demons By Daylight, a novel as harrowing
about a deranged killer stalking Liverpool as The Face That Must Die, and then turn around and write something as phantasmagorical and hallucinatory as his novel Incarnate, and
manage to scare on many different levels.
The Shining has a few similarities with Rosemary's Baby: 1. A young couple moves into a building with notorious reputation. 2. The building is under secret control of a sinister group (in Rosemary's Baby a witch cult, in the Shining the Overlook is controlled by a ghost group. 3. In both stories the husband secretly joins the sinister group (Guy joins the witches, Jack joins the ghost group). 4. In both stories the husband is a struggling artist of so.e kind(Rosemary's Baby Guy is an actor, in the Shining Jack is a writer). 5. In both stories the little boy character is more or less the focal point of all the horror. 6. In both stories the woman is taken advantage by the husband. 7.
What's insteresting Is the perspective of both stories.
Cool, I’ve read both but never thought of this. Thanks
Except the shining movie is really a bastardized version of the actual story. No wonder Stephen king hated it
Why don’t these things happen on late night anymore? Actually interviewing artists about their craft? Fallon could never
Only fun karaoke games with Ariana Grande & drinking games with the cast of the Big Bang theory
@@joshgoodman9882 All the interesting conversations exist on podcasts now
Great point.
Cheap gags with celebrities, or dumbed down political jokes (just Trump jokes). The intellect of those shows has fallen to such juvenille levels. I half expect to literally see a pissing contest on one of those shows.
@@HarrisonGLong huh, you're right
Before King and Straub wrote The Talisman together. Interesting. I wonder if that collaboration came as a result of both of them being on this show together.
they were both hit by cars too!!!
When did king amd romero 1st meet....this was 80? , as said in description, in 1981 king was on romeros set of knightriders, writing creepshow together...curious if they met prior to this or at this
Dang Dick Cavvet had everyone one on. My favorite horror movies is George Romero's Day of the Dead. Stephen King has too many good ones to name. The Stand, It, Misery, Pet Sematary, Thinner etc etc.
King is too wordy and he takes forever to get to the point. All of his novels could be condensed a lot and would improve if they were.
this tv is just another levele, wow
Interesting that the two timeless horror stories (Dracula & Frankenstein) were written by one-hit wonders, but important to note that both Stoker and Shelley came from extremely rich artistic milieus. Stoker was a member of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, where he must have been something of an eminence gris to Yeats, Arthur Conan Doyle, Algernon Blackwood and others - all of whom interestingly were members of Britain's Ghost Club - the original "paranormal investigators" founded by Charles Dickens. One thing great artists have in common - they don't just come out of nowhere and pull ideas and techniques out of the ether. They have a deep connection to tradition, which you can really feel in this conversation.
The cigarettes. My god, imagine this now on some talk show.
calm down
Buy me a pack. I'm out.
Funny you say, because George Romero died from lung cancer.
Amazing video!! First time watching it.
That’s a fun fact, that King got the idea from Bradbury, and The Stepford Wives, from Future Shock.
great interview and guests
Absolutely wonderful
Prescient insight by Romero about the importation of horror into American suburbs due to our own growing awareness of our colonial/imperial impact.
Ghost Story was good with Astaire and Wasson. Wish Wasson would be in more films. His top are Ghost Story, Dream Warriors and Body Double. Mostly plays music now on his TH-cam channel and he’s from Oregon!
It's a good line-up, but the absence of Garth Marenghi is inexcusable
Chris F he knows plenty of writers that use subtext, they’re all cowards
Always happy to see a Darkpkace reference where I don't expect it!
Because Darkplace had its brief run in Peru during this broadcast.
That truck movie with Dennis Weaver one of my favorite actors. He and Richard Crenna. Who was in that Audrey Hepburn scary when first seen on the big screen. WAIT UNTIL DARK. The dark of night us scary.
Barbara Brennan . Duel: "You can't beat me on the grade!" The film that made Spielberg.
Barbara Brennan yeah as soon as he said it (King) I thought didn't he write a book about trucks coming to life? Can't remember but think they made a movie out of it. Maximum overdrive I think it was called. I might be getting mixed up.
Maga Dog. Yeah, maximum overdrive. Dodgy film. Christine the killer car was better because he didn't direct it.
I remember watching that movie in the early 70s on TV, it made a real impression on me. I haven't seen it since.
they had to dose the set with holy water after the show
Romero is so insightful. King is Kinging.
Ira Levin 👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻
GOAT!!!
Any friend of spiders is alright by Me, Kudos to Dick Cavett.
Never knew theres a bram stoker reference in r baby
George Romero's collar _is_ Dracula.
Now THIS is an epic round. (R.I.P. George A. Romero) Thank you so much for uploading this. However i disagree with Straub. I think even as an Adult you can still enjoy Howard Philip Lovecraft's novels because the way he wrote his horror being the vague mysterious ancient horrors of the ageless creatures and their reign of terror and brutal madness that no human mind can really comprehend. And that speaks to the primal fears of man. The terror of a force that we have no power of (and which has been there even long before mankind existed) and the deranged out of world chaos that deeply shakes man's perception of reality. However i can see why it's not for everyone and i suppose many find Lovecraft's way of writing too repetitive in the way he describes the horrors with the ever same or similar sounding phrasing.
For an adult Horror writer, Lovecraft may seem like it's more for teens.
Lovecraft's best work is not really concerned with humanity: it's concerned with getting across the terror of a totally arbitrary, hostile universe without meaning but that may
contain malevolent forces that we can never hope to remotely comprehend. There's the existential horror of King's Misery of being the captive of an insane number one fan, and then there's Lovecraft's horror in The Call of Cthulhu of the revelation that mankind is totally insignificant, and the vast scope and ramifications of that. There's some truth
that Lovecraft tends to make more of an impression on readers at a tender age (as it absolutely did for me in the early 1980s), but his best work, I think, holds up on an adult level. Honestly these days I prize writers like Robert Aickman, Peter Straub, Ramsey Campbell, Dennis Etchison, Shirley Jackson, Arthur Machen, Algernon Blackwood, M. R. James, and a few others a lot more than Lovecraft. A lot of Lovecraft's early stuff is pretty crummy. A handful of his mid to late tales and novellas are great, to me, and that's about it. But I can read anything by Robert Aickman and it impresses me more as an adult than anything by Lovecraft. Although Aickman wasn't concerned with "cosmic" horror, but more psychological terror and unease.
@@thiscorrosion900 I agree that Lovecraft's best work holds up for exactly the reason you give. I do, however, like his early Dunsany pastiches, especially _The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath_ . His racism is appalling, of course; whatever his personal psychology and suffering, _The Horror at Red Hook_ is inexcusable.
If only Wes Craven had been in this same interview, around this time he had probably made Last house on the left and hills have eyes.
"Tonight on Jimmy Kimmel, Kim kardashian discusses her new hair color"... Can we have another show like this on late night, or is it all cheap stunts with celebrities or lame DNC humor?
True masters
George Romero looks like 1950's era Denver Pyle .
GOATS of horrors
This was waaaay too short!
I'm going to be honest: I had no idea Ira Levin was a man. I just assumed that the author of Rosemary's baby and The Stepford Wives was a woman
0:52 - I thought my computer was glitching.
that long stutter freaking scared me! lol
@@misslizmoon I think it was a deliberate pause; he wasn't sure if Lovecraft's reputation as a horrible racist would derail the conversation.
wow, some comedy gold going on in this thread
I thought we were past mocking people with disabilities. Guess not.
@@ChilliCheezdog It was an honest comment. Look who's judging people. It ain't me.
is this channel ever going to show the Dick Cavett shows where he interviews Jackie Gleason or Art Carney? How about any Honeymooners actors that were a part of the main cast?
Couple years later, Romero and King would do Creepshow!
WOW you are so right. One of my favorite horror movies
Worthless knowledge but...King was on set of Romero's knightriders, 1981, writing creepshow for 1982
The icons of horror
King reminds me of ed kemper here
@bkmustaciola ifkr lol
I read The Stand in 6th grade. Still the longest book I’ve ever read.
bill denbrough is definitely based on peter straub
Even the description of adult Denbrough in the novel is like Straub
Who added the ghost thing to this video at 8:55?
Cigarette smoke
@@fightermmaYes your right, didn't see the cigarette. Funny how it travels.
That would be reality, and that "ghost" was physical. So. Nature in a way combined with mans need to create plus enjoy. Basically all man.
It's certainly cigarette smoke but ghost thing is more fun and appropriate for this panel=)
John Rotuno I had thought that someone added it to the video as a joke. I didn’t notice the cigarette at first.
SO LET ME GET THIS STRAIGHT - GEORGE ROMERO WROTE NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD BY READING I AM LEGEND???? MY MIND IS BLOWN - I'm terribly sorry for the caps but this just blew me away.
Well, you can easily see why I Am Legend would have been a major influence on Romero.
I am legend was about vampires in an apocalypse and he changed them into zombies that came back from the dead and killed people.
Young George Romero reminds me of Dan Harmon.
Someone edit in some sinister pipe organ over Straub saying "Lovecraft".
King looks like older Richie
Missed William Peter Blatty
I'd love to see Jordan Peele adapt early Straub; Shadowland would be perfect or If You Could See Me Now
No.
“...where do you get your ideas from?”
And that question turned out to spur an interesting discussion. So there.
Pilletta Doinswartsh ... “... So there”
Super Dave is rolling in his grave
What kind of question even is that
bkmustaciola yes, unfortunately Super Dave passed away early this year. He now gets his ideas from the big Ralph’s in the sky...
I saw the spider near the end.
Now who would downvote this video?
fallon
God, is there an Agatha Christie or Martha Grimes interview. But they're murder mystery authors. Author, author. More author interviews. Mary Woolstonecraft Shelley wrote Frankenstein and also brought the woman's movement to America. The Dracula movies at local theatre scared me into my parents bed at night. But my life is much scarier now.
King looks like a Who from Whoville.
Where is harlan Ellison?
THR presents the horror writers roundtable.
0:53
Peter stutter when he said Lovecraft was very creepy.
That ended WAY too quickly
This was originally a 2 part interview, it's probably on YT somewhere
@@maritimus17 yes. I found the entire interview and posted it on here 6 days ago. Thanks though.
@@johnrotuno1077 oh nice! Gonna watch it now...best round-table ever!
@@maritimus17 enjoy!!!
Steven King is Richard Bachmann as Mark David Chapman in "Son of Sam: The Musical"
Lllllllllllll-Llll-ovecraft
The original masters of horror. Who have we today taking up this mantle as effectively... uh, hmm
OMG Jim Carrey looks like Stephen King, I see him playing him in a future biopic.
th-cam.com/video/NP6RzRfVlpA/w-d-xo.html Look at the Keyboard Player. Separated by birth. Jim Carrey,Uh Uh.
Dan Aykroyd looks like Stephen King
No
Say what?
You mean Bill Hader?
gods.
"People that have no good cause to lie"
Yeah i see the flaw in that logic from a mile away. Then again these are horror writers, theyre either on that spectrum, or prefer to cast as little doubt as possible, just to make their work that little bit more frightening.
Some want attention, some are delusional, some see what they want to see. Old buildings have loose floorboards and noisy pipes that let the imagination run wild. That's why new buildings rarely have "ghosts".
@@Paulafan5 Yeah ive never heard or seen a plausible story which wasnt easily explained, then when you see how flawed the human memory is. Recorded anything, sessions with psychics, ghost building investigation etc. What is said and shown vs a person telling us how amazingly accurate a psychic is are always miles apart. People are too happy to delude themselves, or want others to believe as them so lie their asses off. They think its true anyway so a few lies or elaboration aint lying in their heads since it "exists" beyond their experience. Theyre just pretending the lies someone else told them (who they believe) represent their personal experience.
this isn't the 80s... stranger things betrayed me.. where's the neon lights? where's the synth music? where's the brand logos everywhere??!!
1980. You know, things havent changed yet
Lovecraft, hard to read as a adult............. ? =__=
0:52 WTF was that?
I didn't know that he was a stutterer either.
Yes, men just plain men are much scarier now. Especially when they sneak up behind me in the cheese section of ALDIS. And I'm not sure why? ! Or who.
Llllllllllllllllllllllllovecraft
My favourites are Rosemary's baby and the Shining of these men's work. I didn't care for eitheir Dawn of the Dead and Ghost Story.
I think King is supremely overrated and his obsessional writing on child sexuality speaks volumes.
well, i can even agree about "overrated" but the second part of rhe sentence is a little ridicoulous: the classic mistake to confuse opera and author. it s a theme, not an obsession: useless maybe, but just a theme
Your probably right,I just couldn’t imagine randomly throwing it in a story I can be quite sensitive on the subject though and should give people benefit of doubt.
Well not to be in King's defense but he was high on cocaine while writing IT and many other books.
Daaaaamn, King is the king of ugliness!!!
Freaks one and all.
Sick ass people. Never understand the genre.
So why are you here, Davis?
All men up there. Why are men so gifted in literature? Except for the rare woman. Except for Christie. I know there's two authors. On another Cavett show.
You can try Shirley Jackson (The Haunting of Hill House, The Lottery [short story]), Mary Shelley (Frankenstein), or Joyce Carol Oates (Haunted: Tales of the Grotesque, Where Are You Going Where Have You Been? [short story])
These men are usually outcasts. Probably didnt have much luck in love life so they slowly isolated themselves and got deep into their heads. Women rarely have trouble finding love.
@@TheMerryPup I visited the grave of Mary Shelley in Bournemouth England.
@@barbarabrennan1753 Ah! I should have gone there when I was in Southampton in '07.
NOTHING that any of these guys ever wrote can touch THE EXORCIST.
Yawn
Yawn x2. It's easy to make anything religious "scary" as it leads to much deeper existential questions.
You are wrong the book was crap the movie was fantastic
Ugh!
Where are the women writers? The Latin ones or the African American ones? Geez!
Wtf
I can't think of any.. I can think of female fantasy and science fiction authors but not horror.
They should've asked Mary Wollstonecraft to be on.. 😂
LOL. wait, you're not actually serious, are you?!
Horror writers...
The most nervous and awkward guest is also the best writer (Straub).