A few years ago, at Rue Morgue's Festival of Fear, I met screenwriter and comic book scripter Joseph O'Brien. My wife and I had just watched ROBOCOP: PRIME DIRECTIVES, a four part mini-series which O'Brien had written that ran on the Sci-Fi Channel, and considered ourselves fans. As it turned out, Joe had reviewed my work in the early days of Rue Morgue, and had written, or was in the process of writing, a comic book mini-series set between CONQUEST OF THE PLANET OF THE APES and BATTLE FOIR THE PLANET OF THE APES. Can you say "fan-atic"? O'Brien's epic, action packed tale out-aped a similar storyline that Marvel Comics published in its black & white POTA mag decades ago. Impressed with both of these projects, I've tried to keep up with O'Brien's diverse career. Now you can, too.

Let's start with your career as a film journalist. You started out at Rue Morgue--I believe you were at Fangoria for a while - and now you're writing quite a bit for RM again.


Well, I'm not technically "at" either magazine; they are the publications I've primarily written for, but I'm not part of either magazine's staff. I have a standing professional agreement with both that I don't write competing pieces, but apart from that I'm just a humble freelancer as far as that's concerned. I consider myself closer in spirit to Rue Morgue because the staff there are all friends of mine.

I started writing for Rue Morgue waaay back in 1998, issue four or five; my first piece was a review of Doug Buck's excellent short films CUTTING MOMENTS and HOME. Of course, my second review was for a terrible movie called ATOMIC DOG, which I eviscerated in a funny kind of way, mostly just to entertain myself. Rodrigo Gudino (who was EIC back then) liked it enough to encourage that sort of behaviour, and between myself, Brad Abraham, and then a little later John Bowen, we sort of established an unofficial "house style" for the reviews. So even though I don't write that regularly for them anymore, I made a small contribution to the overall attitude of the mag, which, in the early days especially, was important in helping distinguish it from other horror magazines ... most notably Fangoria. But periodically Jovanka or Monica or Dave will call me up asking if I can help out with a piece, and as I said they're pals, so I do whatever I can for them.

Ironically, part of the reason I had to scale back my contributions to RM was because I was busy co-writing CUTTHROATS NINE with Rodrigo, which will be his first feature film as a director (after a trio of terrific short films: THE EYES OF EDWARD JAMES, THE DEMONOLOGY OF DESIRE, and THE FACTS IN THE CASE OF MR. HOLLOW).


The Fango gig was a complete fluke, right-place-right-time kind of thing; I was at the Toronto International Film Festival, in line for a Midnight Madness screening of Miike's GREAT YOKAI WAR and I found myself standing next to Tony Timpone and EVIL ALIENS director Jake West. Tony and I struck up a conversation and he asked me if I wanted to do some writing for the magazine. I've been reading Fangoria since I was ten, eleven years old, so naturally I said yes immediately. It was a total dream come true to see my name in the Fango masthead. As with Rue Morgue?, it's a thing where if they call me and I have time, I do some writing for them.


I see you had some film crew positions before you started screenwriting, so I assume you had aspirations as a filmmaker early on. What is the Joseph O'Brien origin story?


I originally wanted to work in visual effects. I was nuts for STAR WARS and Ray Harryhausen movies and monsters of all types. As I got older my interests branched out into writing and directing. I wrote a bunch of terrible scripts as a teenager (of course, I thought they were brilliant at the time), mostly ripoffs (sorry, homages) of other movies all mashed together, but that's what you do when you start out, you imitate.

Then I discovered Syd Field's first book, Screenplay, and it totally changed how I viewed the process. I learned all about three act structure and all those things I take for granted now. I kept writing, and eventually one of my scripts caught the eye of a local producer, a guy called Damian Lee, here in Toronto. He didn't buy the script, but he did hire me as his assistant. I worked on a ton of crummy low-budget action movies, you know, the ones that clog up the back racks at Blockbuster? But it was an education; like film school except I got paid for it, so there was no bad there. And it led to my first produced writing credit and gave me an actual career.


Your first screenplay credit was as co-writer of the serial killer flick PAPERTRAIL, which co-starred RESERVOIR DOGS Chris Penn and Michael Madsen. You shared writing credit with the director.


As I said, I was Damian's assistant, which meant I got his car washed, fed his plants, answered his phone and escorted his high-strung high-maintenance actress girlfriend around town while she went Christmas shopping. But I also read scripts for him, punched up scripts that were in development and wrote a couple as well. PAPERTRAIL was the first one that wound up actually getting produced. The movie was no great shakes, but I got to hang out with Mike Madsen and Chris Penn (R.I.P.) and Steve McQueen's son Chad (who was one of our co-producers). More importantly, as I said, it got me my first actual screen credit as a writer. Having even just one produced screen credit, even on a bad movie, gives you professional legitimacy within the industry. Suddenly I could get meetings, because I was no longer just another aspiring screenwriter. I had really done it.


Then you wrote not one, but four ROBOCOP TV movies which the Sci-Fi Channel ran in the states as a mini-series. Despite the obvious low budget, this four-parter was my favorite follow-up to Voorhoven's original. What are your thoughts on the project now?


I'm still really fond of it. I had a blast working on that show, and I had the opportunity to be involved at every phase of the production, right up to the sound mix, which is rare for a writer. I probably should have pushed for some sort of producer credit, but I was still young and stupid and just happy to have the job. I was like a kid in a candy store on that set.

There are all kinds of things I wish I had done differently, that I wish other people had done differently, but I'm very proud of what we accomplished overall. The original ROBOCOP was a really human story, something I think the other sequels missed the boat on a little bit, and we were adamant about bringing that core humanity back to the proceedings. On that front, at least, I think we were very successful.


I thought you guys created some real pathos with the father-son relationship, and I loved following the story's development.


The blessing and the curse of having eight hours to fill is, well, you have eight hours to fill. Rather than pad it out, we took that opportunity to build some complexity into the character relationships, particularly that of Murphy and his now-adult son James. With that longer form you can add layers to even the supporting characters; in a shorter production, that's the first thing to go. All the characters have pretty substantial arcs through the story. Nobody's in even remotely the same place they began by the conclusion.


Right now, each telefilm is available only as separate DVDs. That's kind of a hefty total, even for a fan like myself. Are there any plans to release an affordable boxed set?

Maybe one day, but I wouldn't hold my breath. They were released in box set form in a few overseas markets, but in North America the distribution was pretty uninspired. That's part of the reason that the miniseries isn't as well known as it could be.

That whole aspect of it was a bit of an uphill battle. The company that held the ROBOCOP TV rights didn't really care much about them; as I understand it, the miniseries was largely made to satisfy some arcane contractual obligation. So there were days when it felt like the only people who really cared about bringing ROBOCOP back were myself and my then-writing partner, Brad Abraham. In some ways it was a good thing, because we got away with stuff we would never have if there had been more executive oversight. But there were days that attitude was really demoralizing, and their indifference really showed when it came to marketing the thing and getting eyes on it.


You also wrote a really fun PLANET OF THE APES comic mini-series, which took place between CONQUEST and BATTLE, yet updated the setting and provided some really big action set pieces. What kinds of parameters were set for you, and do you find that comics allow you a certain freedom as a writer that films do not?

Well, with comics you don't have to worry about things like budget, which was refreshing. I could write in squadrons of Harrier jets piloted by brain-augmented gorillas blowing 747s out of the sky and nobody bats an eyelash. That alone took some getting used to; I would find myself constrained by the mindset of having worked in low-budget film for so long. I had to keep reminding myself to go BIG.

As far as parameters, we had to get approval from Twentieth Century Fox at every step of the way, but they were really on board with what we were doing (they're very protective of that franchise, even after all these years). They asked me to dial back some of the language and violence, to keep it at a PG-level consistent with the movies, but apart from that we were given a tremendous amount of creative latitude.


How did your version of the BLACK CHRISTMAS remake differ from what reached the screen, and how much can you tell me bout what went wrong with that script's development? I seem to recall this was a protracted nightmare...


BLACK CHRISTMAS remains a bit of a sore spot for me, frankly. I suppose I should just suck it up and get over it, but it still pisses me off. When we went in for our initial pitch meeting, the first thing we told the producers was that the tropes of BLACK CHRISTMAS had been so deeply mined by three decades of slasher movies that it would be impossible to do a straight remake and have it be remotely fresh. Nobody would want to see it.

We worked for a period of about eighteen months on various drafts; in the end we wound up with what I thought was a scary, intense survival horror movie that was respectful of the original without just being a tired retread. I'm mostly disappointed because it was a movie I really wanted to see.

Then Glen Morgan came on board as director, and basically his first decision (as I understand it) was to jettison our script and substitute his own -- which ironically began life as a remake of another 1970s horror movie, BAD RONALD. Needless to say, not my favorite day in the business. So we were out of the picture and he made a movie that -- to my understanding, anyway, I still haven't seen the thing -- is essentially a straight remake of the original (with bits of BAD RONALD attached, presumably). And surprise, surprise, nobody wanted to see it, and it tanked.

Now, maybe if they had made our script, no one would have gone to see that either. But at least it would have been something a little different. Funnily enough, I just saw a new-ish Norwegian horror movie called COLD PREY that's not dissimilar to what we had in mind for our version of BLACK CHRISTMAS. The setting and the tone are very much in line with what we wanted to do. So in a way, I did get to see that movie. And I thought it was really cool.


You seem to be a very well rounded geek: horror, SF, comic books...


"Well rounded geek". I like the sound of that. I think that's how I'm going to introduce myself from now on. Joe O'Brien: Well Rounded Geek".

I find that I stopped categorizing my interests into things like "horror" or "sci-fi" a while back. They're pretty artificial parameters, in my book. I like stories that are imaginative, that transport me. Sometimes I like to be transported to wondrous places, and sometimes I like to be transported to scarier places. I'm easy that way. Sometimes it's zombies, sometimes it's robots and spaceships. And man, when you put zombies vs. robots on spaceships, it's like napalm in the morning.


What can you tell us about your latest comic project?


NIGHT is something I've been trying to get off the ground forever; my artist and co-creator Attila Adorjany spent some time trying to figure out what form it was going to take, and we ultimately decided that the webcomic form was going to offer us the best means of getting it out there. People can go to the site every week (http://night.600poundgorilla.com/) and get their regular dose, along with various special features and easter eggs that we're going to put up, and we control the distribution and the marketing of it. And the horizontal. And the vertical.

It started as sort of an exercise in world building, to create an environment in which to tell lots of weird stories. I wanted to create a sort of "non-apocalypse", some massive event that everyone witnesses, but one that ultimately doesn't affect their day-to-day life, but then things start to change subtly around them -- so subtly that they don't want to admit it.

So I came up with the notion of the entire world being inexplicably wrapped up in this shell of darkness, and wondered what would happen to people as a result. And the answer was "not as much as you might think". It'd be scary in the moment, but once the dust settled and it became clear things aren't going to change back, people would just have to get on with their lives, wouldn't they?

It's different than, say, nuclear war or a plague, where the whole paradigm for survival shifts. When this event happens, nobody dies, nothing is destroyed, we just get cut off from the sky. People still have families to feed, jobs to go to, mortgages to pay, they just have to get on with it and let somebody else deal with the big problems. But the long-term psychological impact would be massive. And then we add monsters and mutations and government conspiracies and quantum physics. It's creepy sci-fi social fiction.

And so into this mix we drop our hero, AJ Strange, this loser reporter whose twin brother disappeared the same day the Night Event occurred. And after five years of searching and feeling like he's taking crazy pills because he's the only one who seems to notice that the world is going a bit weird, he finally gets a lead. And it starts him on this journey to find not only his brother, but the origin of the Night Event itself, which is a subject a lot of people don't want pried into.


I love Attila's artwork.


He's kind of genius, that guy. A mad genius, but a genius nevertheless. He's a great collaborator in that he'll take my ideas and hand them back to me with his own twist on them, which will in turn send me down an avenue I wouldn't have otherwise considered.


How badly did the season finale of LOST shatter your theory about what's going on?


I don't think it's shattered it at all, except for my theory that Richard Alpert's face would be on the giant statue (although I still think he might have four toes). I still think the island formed around the ancient wreckage of a crashed alien spacecraft and that all the various phenomena are caused by the remnants of the communications, medical and drive systems. Ask me again after next season.


What's in the pipeline for you?


Quite a bit. I'm currently in pre-production on a short horror film I'm directing called GNAW. I co-wrote the script with author Lesley Livingston, whose fantasy novel Wondrous Strange was just optioned by X-MEN and WATCHMEN screenwriter David Hayter's Dark Hero Productions. She's about to become a big deal, I think. I'm writing another feature spec, dusting off my graphic novel, and doing a bunch of blogging at www.hardcorenerdity.com, which has turned out to be a tremendous amount of fun. Mostly my plan for the foreseeable is to work on cool projects with interesting people, or interesting projects with cool people. So far it's working out great.