Stephen King's lookalike son executive-produces a horror series

[samhexum]

When your dad is Stephen King, it makes for an unusual childhood.

 

So it’s no wonder that Joe Hill’s novel about a killer who feeds off children’s souls has been adapted into AMC’s new horror series “NOS4A2.”

 

“When I was 8 years old, my dad did a film with George Romero, ‘Creepshow.’ They put me in it too —I was on set for a week,” says Hill, 46, who’s also an executive producer on the AMC series. “And I spent the whole week in [special effects artist] Tom Savini’s trailer watching him artistically disfigure movie stars and create frightening monsters. He’s the grandfather of gore, the maestro of spatter makeup effects.

 

“He was like my first rock star [and] I thought he was the coolest person,” says Hill. “He wore motorcycle boots and a black leather jacket, and he had arched eyebrows like Spock. This was the early ’80s — there were no on-set babysitters.

 

“They just let Tom Savini look after me.”

 

Hill, who lives in New Hampshire with his wife and kids, attributes that formative experience to his writing career (which also includes bestselling novels “Heart-Shaped Box” and “Horns,” adapted into a film starring Daniel Radcliffe).“By the time that week was done, that’s what I wanted to do with my life,” he says. “I wanted to murder people in creative ways and think up frightening, memorable monsters.”

 

“NOS4A2” (pronounced “nosferatu,”after the title of the 1922 German vampire film ) premiering Sunday at 9 p.m., follows Charlie Manx (“Star Trek’s” Zachary Quinto), a nefarious being who feeds off the souls of children and puts what’s left of them in a twisted imaginary village where every day is Christmas. His path intersects with Vic McQueen (Ashleigh Cummings from Australia’s “Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries”), a working-class artist who discovers a supernatural ability to track Manx.

 

It might seem odd for a Christmas- themed show to air in June — but that’s the point.

 

“Part of how I come by the frightening presentation of Christmas goes back to that old Lon Chaney quote, ‘There’s nothing funny about a clown at midnight,’ ” Hill says. “It’s one of my favorite lines about the horror genre because part of what you’re doing is finding stuff that people feel is reassuring — then you whip the carpet out from under it.

 

“It’s all about context. When you hear Christmas music on the radio in December and the snow is coming down, it’s delightful,” he says. “If it’s the middle of the summer and you’re out in the woods and you come across an old shack with boards on the windows and you hear watery Christmas music coming from inside, you turn around and run in the other direction real fast. Because there’s something wrong with that whole scene.”

 

Hill has used his pseudonym since the beginning of his career so that his novels could be published on their own merit. It’s since become his professional name.

 

“When I started out, I had a fear that if I started sending stories out as Joseph King, an unscrupulous publisher would see a chance to make a quick buck on the last name and would publish a terrible book,” he says. “For my own sense of self-worth, I needed to know that when I sold a story, I sold it because an editor genuinely liked it.”

 

And while Hill says his father gives him great writing advice, that isn’t what they talk about most of the time.

 

“He’s a great person to send a story to, and he’ll always have useful suggestions,” he says. “But I would say most of our conversations are about our favorite recent shows. Generally we talk to each other about what we’re watching on TV.”