If your New Year is already looking packed, check out the schedule facing artist-filmmaker Gris Grimly. One of the most versatile talents working in horror today, Grimly recently spoke with us about his upcoming feature-film directorial debut, the stop-motion-animated Pinocchio (based on the classic children’s book, and produced by Guillermo del Toro and the Jim Henson Company). But the creator’s got plenty of other irons in the fire. In the following exclusive new interview, he talks about his next short films, his upcoming book adaptations of Frankenstein and Edgar Allan Poe’s short stories, his recent children’s book collaboration with writer Neil Gaiman, and his upcoming music video starring the Mistress of the Dark herself, Elvira. Whew!

What’s the status of the “Mistress of the Dark” music video starring Elvira that you directed for the band Ghoul Town?

We finished it.  We just haven’t released it.  Basically Ghoul Town did a song for the Limited Edition Cannibal Flesh Riot DVD release – it comes with a CD of music inspired by the film – and that’s how I met the band.  They really liked the film, wanted to do a song for it, and that was a couple years ago.  They ended up running into Elvira at a horror convention.  Her manager saw them perform, went up to them and said “You guys are great, we’d love to do something with you.”  They of course are fans of Elvira and said sure.  They met Elvira and they talked about it, and they ended up writing a song about her.  Then they contacted me and asked if I would direct a video for it.  I had actually met Elvira as well at a horror convention – or a comic convention actually, up in San Francisco.  She came up to our booth and just said “Gris Grimly?  I’m Cassandra Peterson, I’m a big fan.”  I said, “Yeah, I’m a big fan of you too obviously.” [Laughs.]  It always works out great when artists can be mutually attracted to each other’s work.  So that project just kind of worked out.  We didn’t have a lot of money – I think that project was made for around two to three thousand dollars.  We were trying to find locations, and, without a lot of money in Hollywood, that’s hard to do.  Because even if you found a location and they gave you a deal, a lot of the times you still need insurance and what not.  Cassandra mentioned shooting it at the Magic Castle, and I said, “That’s a great idea.  But there’s no way.”  She was like, “Oh they love me there! I’ll make it work.”  Sure enough, she called ‘em up and we had a meeting.  Even though we had a meeting, I was talking to a friend and said “Yeah, once they find out I only have five hundred dollars to give them, they’re gonna laugh at me.”  Sure enough they showed me the whole place and, at the end, I said, “Yeah, this is great.  I have five hundred dollars.”  And they said, “Well, we’ll do it.”  So we shot some of it there and, again, with a lack of a budget, we shot some of it in my garage.  And we pulled together a really cool video out of it.

But it’s not yet available on DVD?

No, what we’re gonna do is, in February, we’re gonna release a maxi-single.  It’s gonna be a CD that comes with the song, a remix of the song, a couple other Halloween songs, and then it’s also gonna come with a DVD that has this video on it, a making-of that’ll have interviews with Cassandra and Ghoul Town and me.  The video, it basically starts out with Elvira going home and turning on the TV and there’s, like, the Hee Haw show, the Hee-Haw variety show.  That’s where Ghoul Town is actually performing.  So we ended up making an entire kind of episode of this mock Hee Haw show.  We shot them performing the song for the video, but we also shot them performing two other songs.  And on top of that, at our wrap party we had constructed this very thrown-together cornfield.  If you’ve ever seen the Hee Haw show, they do these cornfield jokes that are just campy, bad one-liners, and we ended up doing that all night long.  Basically, everyone’s just getting shit-faced, and the jokes get so bad, but they’re hilarious.  That’s all gonna be in this little Hee Haw show.  We have a little announcer, and then the band will play and then we’ll go to the cornfield jokes.  Then the announcer will come back and introduce the band again – so it’ll be like a full twenty-five-minute episode.  It’s gonna be really cool.

You’ve also got two or three other short films in various stages of development.  Can you talk about Zeppo: El Exorcismo and Wounded Embark of the Lovesick Mind?

El Exorcismo is pretty much done.  It’s something that I’m proud of, but in a way it’s also very amateur.  We kind of developed a production company in the way that a bunch of friends who get drunk and shoot a film would.  It’s kind of like a twenty-four-hour film festival thing we’re doing – except with a lot of alcohol.  The first one we did, me and a friend were completely shit-faced – we drank a bottle of whiskey and a bottle of wine, we were gonna watch a movie and somehow the camera came out, and we said, “Let’s shoot a movie.”  We had no storyboards and no script, just the two of us.  No lighting, no gear – and we made this five-minute short called The Craving.  Now I understand the whole concept of “We’re drunk and it’s bad,” but I actually didn’t think it was that bad for what we had, and the fact that the budget was probably ten dollars, and under the circumstances.  We ended up throwing it online just for people to watch, and… I don’t know, it’s just entertaining.  So El Exorcismo is that same type of film but we definitely pushed the boundaries on it more, and we weren’t necessarily shit-faced.  We were drinking and we were drunk, but then again there was a preconceived concept.  But there wasn’t a script, there weren’t storyboards or anything – we just went and made it happen.  And, again, it is what it is.  But it’s like an exercise – it’s a way to use the same tools you would to make a film but in a way you can easily do it in a weekend. And you get the same experience, you get the same thrills.  Wounded Embark is something that was going to be more like Cannibal Flesh Riot.  It’s already scripted, it’s storyboarded.  There was a time period where I thought it was gonna get shot but the whole housing thing collapsed, and one of the investors pulled out.  At the time period I was gonna throw it in because I thought it was something we were gonna have to shoot quickly, and when I mean quickly I mean make it in a time period where I didn’t really have the time to do it.  But I was actually gonna push all my book work back and just make it happen because I thought it needed to be done.  When the investment didn’t come in, I just decided to focus on my book work and getting my deadlines done for that.  The book that I’m working on now is a sequel to my Edgar Alan Poe book that came out three or five years ago, and when I’m done that I plan on shooting this next film and at least getting it shot, and I can worry about the editing later down the line.

So this next book is another volume of Poe stories?

Yeah, it is actually.  The last one was Tales of Mystery and Madness.  This one is Edgar Allan Poe’s Tales of Death and Dementia.  It’s gonna have “The Tell-Tale Heart”, “The Oblong Box”, and then a couple more obscure Poe stories that I would really like to get people exposed to.

Going back to your film work for a second – do you see a DVD coming out in the future collecting all of your short films?

Yeah, I would like to do that.  Cannibal Flesh Riot was released as a limited-edition, and we sold out of the first thousand-copy run, and I haven’t been able to reprint.  We plan to reprint after the New Year.  There’s only gonna be two thousand made and when it’s done I’d kind of like to keep it a collectible like that.  Eventually I’d like to release it, just the film, on a DVD with a couple other shorts and get distribution on it.

You mentioned the next Poe book – is too soon to talk about what book will follow that?

No, I don’t think so.  I’m working on a contract right now to do an adaptation of Frankenstein.  If that comes through, that won’t be something I start ‘til late spring.  So I actually have a nice window to get this next short cut and shot.

Recently we’ve seen the release of The Dangerous Alphabet (written by Neil Gaiman), which proved to be a phenomenal success – did you find that that helped bring a new audience to your work?

I’m sure it did.  I think I’m so versatile [that] I think so many different things bring in a different audience.  Cannibal Flesh Riot has brought in an audience that my children’s books definitely didn’t bring in.  The Neil Gaiman book has definitely brought in a different audience.  But I don’t know if I have witnessed it as far as “Yes, this definitely comes from here.”

Do you have any other projects going on right now besides the books and films?

I don’t normally do a lot of design work or anything – just because it’s really difficult to work on projects with other people.  I mean sometimes people don’t know exactly what they want, and then you start working around in circles trying to find what they want.  That’s always a headache.  I do band art every once in a while when I have the time.  I just finished a t-shirt design for Michael Graves and I’ll do stuff for horror punk bands and stuff like that.  But it’s not often.  Because, part of it, I’ve actually promised four bands to do work for them and I haven’t been able to get to it yet.  So it’s hard when you’re juggling time and you’re trying to shoot films and complete book deadlines and live life.

I’m curious as to what books and movies you're enjoying these days… are there any particular filmmakers or artists inspiring you right now?

It’s kind of weird… I like Wes Anderson a lot.  I’m not really into a lot of horror that’s going on right now.  I think a lot of my influences come from old ‘50s/’60s horror films, maybe some stuff from the ‘80s.  I don’t really go to a lot of movies in the theaters.  I don’t get the right feeling when I leave, so there’s only a select few that I’ll venture out of the house to go see.  So I spend a lot of time at home watching a lot of old films.  We just watched Seven Samurai, and before that we watched Being There.  So I spend more time watching older films than I do new.  I love reading, but I find it difficult to find the time to read.  I’m kind of like a binge reader – when work frees up, I’ll just be reading tons of books, and then when I’m busy working, I never find the time.  I listen to a lot of music but I don’t go to a lot of shows.  I go to some smaller shows but I guess crowds just kind of give me anxiety.  I don’t spend a lot of time amongst a lot of people.

It’s funny you mention that, because it seems like, in recent years, you’ve been more of a presence at horror conventions, where the crowds can get very large.

Yeah.  That’s kind of different though.  I mean, you go there and you do your thing, but you’re not really “out.”  For example, when I do Comic-Con, I don’t walk through the convention.  I go to my booth and I do what I need to do and then I leave.  I’m not at Comic-Con for enjoyment, because for me it’s not very enjoyable to be like cattle.  [Laughs.]  It’s insane.  I’d love to look at a lot of that stuff, but I’d like to see it if there were only a few hundred people there, rather than the hundred-thirty-thousand that attend.

In real life, what’s your greatest fear?

I’m kind of a hypochondriac, and I don’t exactly know what I’m afraid of – if I’m afraid of actually getting a disease or afraid of death.  I don’t know if I’m afraid of death.  Maybe I’m afraid of dying young or dying before I accomplish everything I’d like to accomplish.  I would say my biggest fear is getting some horrible disease.  I’m a big hypochondriac.  I get a headache and I think I have a brain tumor. [Laughs.]