Funny Stuff

I took part in a conference call with Scott Hallock, one of the creators of SCARE TACTICS, which just started it’s new season on SyFy Network. Great guy, really nice, and he had some great things to say about the show…one good piece of information I got from him was that the hilarious Jon Dore will definitely be a regular on season 4, so keep an eye out for that.

New episodes on SyFy on Monday nights! Check out the transcript for my part of the call below. Full transcript coming soon…

Operator:

Our next question comes from the line of (Josh Boseman). Please proceed.

(Josh Bozeman): Hi guys. Thanks for taking the call. I love the show. I’m a big fan.

Scott Hallock:

Thanks (Josh).

(Josh Bozeman): I have to ask, how did you score John Doerr and is he going to be on a regular

basis? The guy is hilarious. I love him.

Scott Hallock:

We love John Doerr and yes, he is going to be on, on a regular basis. Several

people on our crew had worked with John before and apparently John was a

fan of the show. And so we approached him about doing some bits. And

luckily he was amenable.

And he is on next week’s show and the week after that. And he brings

something different and hilarious to every role he played. He wasn’t always

playing – sometimes he’s playing kind of a straightforward scientist.

Other times – a lot of times he got to play kind of a really creepy guy if you

saw this week’s episode, he was the bad guy. He brought a poisoned cake to

the party. And I love the way he read that line, “The cake is poisoned idiots.” I

win. You lose. I love the way he said that.

And then coming up in two weeks on the 18th he’s in a bit where he’s

brandishing a cleaver and, the woman says to him, “Oh my God, you have a

knife.” And he yells back at her, “It’s a cleaver,” and it’s just very, it’s a funny

moment in a very tense situation.

And so John will be back on a semi regular basis throughout the fourth season.

(Josh Bozeman): Great. That’s good to hear. Also I’m curious, you probably get this question a

lot, but how do you think – so like how do you know you’ve gone too far? Is

there a point where you think that you can go too far in a scare?

Because I know some of the scares they’re over pretty quickly and I’m sitting

there at home and I’m watching and I’m thinking oh, keep it going, keep it

going. This is great.

Scott Hallock:

Right.

(Josh Bozeman): And then sometimes they drag out and you’re like wait a minute, this is

getting really crazy. Do you think there’s a point where as long as you don’t

scar the person or physically hurt them, you know…

Scott Hallock:

Right.

(Josh Bozeman): …where do you draw the line at?

Scott Hallock:

Well the goal is to – is for everyone to have a good time. We compare our

show to a roller coaster. We want it to be a thrill for people but when they get

off the ride at the end we want them to go wow, that was fun. Let’s do it

again. So you definitely can go too far and we’re cognizant of that.

And I don’t think we have ever. Because people bounce back at the end and

they do say to us, “Oh my God, that was fun. Let’s do it again.” And the way

they do it again is they give us the names of a bunch of their friends that they

want to scare.

And so we’re very careful about monitoring the situation. The friend or family

member who has set the person up is watching the bit as it goes along. And if

they ever feel like it is going too far they can tell us and we’ll stop

immediately.

(Josh Bozeman): Oh okay.

Scott Hallock:

So we do take that very seriously and we want people to have a good time. So,

if someone’s deathly afraid of spiders we won’t put them in a room full of

spiders. We don’t want them to face their real fears.

We want them to – we want to confront them with something that’s hopefully

ridiculous and have them believe in it and then at the end of it go oh my God,

I can’t believe I bought that.

Because we had – that’s another big reaction we got this season is people after

it was over going oh my God, I watch that show all the time and I look at

those people and I say how can they believe that? And now I’m one of those

people. I can’t believe it. I thought these shows were fake and now I know

they’re real.

(Josh Bozeman): Brilliant. All right. Thanks. I’m going to keep watching definitely and I

appreciate you…

Scott Hallock:

Great.

(Josh Bozeman): …taking the time out today.

Scott Hallock:

Thanks (Josh).