Dark dreamers Dan Angel and Billy Brown scare up Night Visions
By Patrick Lee

Television producers Dan Angel and Billy Brown love the scary stuff. Former
story editors for The X-Files, the partners have brought viewers the popular
adaptation of R.L. Stine's children's horror series Goosebumps for Fox, as
well as John Carpenter's Bodybags for Showtime.

Now the duo is poised to revive the venerable horror-anthology form with
Night Visions, a 13-episode series that begins July 12 on Fox. The one-hour
show, shot in Vancouver earlier this year, will highlight two stories each
week, hosted by former punk rocker Henry Rollins, directed by some of
Hollywood's top talent and featuring movie stars such as Aidan Quinn,
Bridget Fonda, Bill Pullman, Thora Birch and Jay Mohr.

As if that weren't enough, Angel and Brown are readying an update of the
1970s SF series Battlestar Galactica for the SCI FI Channel and Fox, in
conjunction with X-Men producer Tom DeSanto and director Bryan Singer. Angel
and Brown took a moment recently to discuss their new projects with Science
Fiction Weekly.

Where did the idea for Night Visions come from?

Brown: Being fans of The Twilight Zone and classic horror films a la
Rosemary's Baby, The Omen, Repulsion, we've always loved the kind of
metaphysical horror film--psychological horror--and also the kinds of twists
and turns that a show like Twilight Zone used to have. And we really felt
like there hadn't been anything like that on TV in a long time. ... It's the
only way, an anthology show, that you can really do short stories. Because
you don't have to service a continuing character. And our idea was to make
little films--to get good filmmakers, film actors who might want to do TV
just for this sort of thing, and to try to make little gems. And I think
we've done pretty well.

Angel: We were very happy, because you get people like Aidan Quinn and
Bridget Fonda and Gil Bellows and Cary Elwes and Brian Dennehy and Jack
Palance and Malcolm McDowell and Lou Diamond Phillips and on and on and on.
They were very excited about doing anthology. They were very excited about
the scripts and the stories. And there were even times when they didn't
initially say yes until they read the script, then they changed their minds.

Brown: Even though the content ranges from metaphysical to psychological to
shows that are horror to ones that are more fantasy, [the shows] were always
character-based, even if there was a supernatural element. It was either a
metaphor or sprang from the inner needs of the character, and that was
really something that we very much like and tried to do and feel that it
makes for more compelling viewing. It gives the actor a really good role.

How is the series structured?

Brown: Each episode is an hour, with two half-hour stories.

Angel: So you'll get two stories every week. But [when] they launch on July
12, they're going to launch four stories. They want to do a two-hour block
to launch the show.

Can you talk about the kinds of stories you'll be dealing with?

Brown: They're really varied. There's one with Bill Pullman that is ...
probably our most sci-fi episode ... about a strange apparition that appears
in the desert. I don't want to say more; I don't want to give it away. It's
really strange. It's really an unusual story. Then there's one with Bridget
Fonda that's very much a diving into the inner life of a woman and her
paranoia and terror.

Angel: And Joe Dante [Small Soldiers] directed that. It's very Hitchcock.

Brown: There's one with Jack Palance as an old scary farmer who may or may
not have supernatural powers who terrorizes a kid next door. He's a guy who
gets both his arms cut off, and this kid feels responsible, and Jack Palance
maneuvers events so he can basically terrorize this kid. It's scary. And we
have one with Randy Quaid about a guy who wakes up in the middle of his own
funeral, and the question is, has he really gone to the other side, or has
he not?

Angel: What we tried to do--and I think we were successful--we will have
psychological tales dealing with people ... but we have killers on the
loose, and monster stories, [and] we have some sci-fi. It's a really nice
mix.

Brown: There's no techno science fiction, but there is science fiction in
the sense of metaphysical fantasy. Are we in another dimension? ... There
are supernatural tales. ... I think fans of sci-fi will be fans of this
show.

Some of the episodes seem to have that Twilight Zone twist.

Brown: I think, generally, we try to have an ending that has a little
surprise. Hopefully, they're not arbitrary surprises. ... I think the viewer
kind of expects that.

Why did you want to do an anthology show?

Angel: The myth out there in the television world and the network world is
that anthology doesn't work. And to be honest with you, we've loved
anthology. We were very successful with Goosebumps for kids. All the
anthologies we grew up on and loved, from Night Gallery to Twilight Zone to
the syndicated anthologies, like Tales from the Darkside and The Hitchhiker,
for the most part, they've been very successful. Tales from the Crypt, The
Outer Limits. So when you're dealing with a genre anthology, I think the
good news is we were able to convince Fox that this could work. I think the
audience is ready for this. I think the audience will like this show. So we
just are hoping that the audience will know this show is coming. They'll
find the show. We think they'll be very happy. Trying to convince the
network that the audience will come, that's always a chore.

What will distinguish Night Visions from the series that have come before?

Brown: I think Twilight Zone [episodes] were very much more morality tales
and fable-like. I don't think this is that. They're definitely relatives.
... I think they're cousins. But I think we've tried to be a little more
psychological, a little more along the idea of a short story. And to give a
kind of palette of terror, different types of terror. We're certainly not
trying to say there's never been anything like this on TV. We're saying it's
a wonderful genre, and we want to continue the tradition.

How did you get top directors like Tobe Hooper (Poltergeist), Dante and
others?

Angel: They liked the material.

Brown: They liked ... the freedom of it. It's not a huge commitment. They
can come in for a couple of weeks, and five days of prep and five days of
shooting, and it's a chance to do the kind of thing [where] they may have a
little more freedom.

Angel: Keith Gordon [Mother Night] ... was great to work with, and he's a
great film director. And he loved the script. These people responded to the
material. And we had a nice mix of directors. We specifically set out to
have really good film directors, like Tobe and Joe and Keith. We had a group
of people who were really strong television directors, like Eve and Tom
Wright. By the way, Ernest Dickerson [Demon Knight] was fantastic on the
film side. And then we had actors like Bill Pullman and Jobeth Williams. ...
So it was a nice mix of actor-directors, TV directors and feature directors.

Who wrote the scripts?

Brown: We wrote four. And we have a staff, and we also free-lanced from
outsiders.

Are they based on short stories, like many of the original Twilight Zone
episodes were?

Brown: One was. The Bill Pullman is based on a short story. I don't know
that it's a classic short story. I mean, I don't think it's that widely
known.

Angel: We brought Earl Hamner [Jr. of The Waltons] in for a story.

Brown: Earl Hamner is an old veteran Twilight Zone writer.

Angel: Wendy MacLeod, who's a playwright, we brought in.

Brown: She wrote the play The House of Yes [and] is fairly well known.

Brown: Hopefully, the audience will never quite know what to expect. The
stories, some of them are even touching. Some of them are just terrifying,
and, hopefully, they'll never get too comfortable. ... Hopefully there's no
formula, other than the common thread that they're all scary and eerie and
well told and well acted.

Angel: Very rarely do you get a chance in prime-time television to sit down
and grab a tub of popcorn and a drink and get ready to have fun watching a
little anthology show. It hasn't happened in a long time, and this is a
chance to have it happen again. ... This is not a summer throwaway. ... This
show was scheduled to launch in midseason, and the reason it didn't is, they
held it as their jewel in the crown of the fall, because there's a strike,
and the strike didn't happen.