What is the strangest thing in your fridge right now?
A half-eaten chocolate hamburger.
What do you do when you can’t get to sleep?
It’s not an uncommon problem for me. I will put on meditation music, I will take a walk, I will sometimes try and take a warm bath, I will do a breathing exercise. If none of that works, I will open my laptop and put on a good old horror movie to help lull me to sleep.
When was the last time you lit a candle?
The other night. Because I was setting the mood for a private session. And that’s as far as I’ll go with that answer.
What movie scarred you for life as a child?
It was called Dark Night of the Scarecrow. And it was a film about a man who rescues a little girl from a dog attack, but the town blames him for the attack and they don’t realise that he was actually saving her. They chase him out into a farm and he hides, dressed up like a scarecrow. They stab him with a pitchfork, they shoot up, and they cover up their crime.
Then, slowly this scarecrow starts showing up in the middle of the night, getting them. It totally messed me up at age seven.
What movie do you always return to?
Harold and Maude. I watched it as a little boy. And then I watched as a teenager – me and my friends in high school – would have a late night party session and then we’d pop on Harold and Maude. Something about that Cat Stevens soundtrack; something about Hal Ashby’s bizarre way of storytelling; something about Bud Cort and Ruth Gordon’s performances – it’s a film I could watch over and over again for the rest of my life.
And what is the most overrated film?
Birth of a Nation. It’s propaganda for patriarchal, racist baloney that people lauded as this great American cinematic achievement. It’s still taught in film schools. Why don’t we just get rid of it?
There are spirits and demons aplenty in your new film Late Night With the Devil. Do you believe in ghosts?
Yes. Where I was growing up in the Midwest, there’s a place not far where I was raised called the Spooklight Road. If you drive down Spooklight Road in southern Missouri, late at night, you can see this orb ghost that will hover. I never got to see the Spooklight Road ghost but I went many times, and I know people who did see it.
You play an unlucky talk show host in the film. If you had to appear on a reality TV program, which one would it be?
I would love to be on The Boulet Brothers’ Dragula. It’s horror meet drag. I have been a judge on the show before, but I would love to be a contestant.
Would you rather die at the bottom of the ocean or up in space?
Space, because I’d rather my last view be looking at the beauty of the world from far away. At the bottom of the ocean it’s so dark.
And what song would play at your funeral?
Wish You Were Here by Pink Floyd.
Late Night With the Devil is in Australian and UK cinemas now and is available to stream on Shudder in the US.
