CREEPSHOW VETERAN JOHN HARRISON TALKS DIRECTING SEASON FOUR
DIRECTOR JOHN HARRISON worked with George Romero on the first Creepshow movie – and numerous iconic properties since – and over 40 years later that bond is still going strong.
“I love doing this show because of my relationship going way back to the original [movie],” he says of the Shudder anthology series. “I also love working with the team that Greg [Nicotero, showrunner] has assembled, which is really superior.
“I love the anthology format, because every show is different. It’s like directing a little mini-movie. As a director, I can come in and really make a short movie from top to bottom. I’m not jumping in on a series that has already established characters and storylines that I have to adhere to, which is fine. I can tell an individual story and bring whatever skill sets I have, whatever creative imagination I have, to that particular story. I know that I’m gonna get a chance to do something different from anything I’ve done before, or anything that I might do again.”
Harrison has two stories in season four: “Smile” in the season opener and “Baby Teeth” in the finale. “Both of them offered me really different challenges,” he says. “‘Smile’, in particular, wasn’t a monster-driven episode, it was more of a psychological thriller. It let me do a couple of things cinematically that I thought were a lot of fun.
“‘Baby Teeth’ was a particularly difficult show, because it involved gruesome effects and a puppet. We made a decision, we were not going to do a digital puppet, it was going to be live action.
“I got to the last day and it was very intense, it was 12 hours non-stop. When there’s a lot of blood flying around, you have to be careful because you have continuity issues and everything else. So it was a particularly tough day. But challenging is also exciting.
“But again, since we’re working with Greg Nicotero, his expertise for years and years before he became a director and producer has been in that realm, so I’m never really worried about the quality. I’m more worried about the time,” he laughs. “These are television episodes. We have limited time and budget, so you really have to know what you’re doing and what you want to do. You have to plan very carefully.”
The effects side of things, he says, has never been a worry for him. “Greg loves practical effects, which is great for me too, because I can see them, I can be there, as opposed to just turning over greenscreen shots that have to be then enhanced with digital effects. When you have the kinds of
