TALES FROM BEYOND THE PALE INTERVIEW SERIES 6: THE HOLE DIGGER creator Larry Fessenden

TALES FROM BEYOND THE PALE INTERVIEW SERIES 6: THE HOLE DIGGER creator Larry Fessenden

Tales' own co-mastermind Larry Fessenden discusses an episode inspired by his own past, "The Hole Digger"

Vegas Outsider: One aspect that separates your episode, The Hole Digger, from the others is that it is based on a real-life incident from your past. Could you briefly discuss the episode’s background in terms of its origin and what prompted you to craft a tale from real life rather than pure imagination?

Larry Fessenden: The incident with the hole digger happened in the 70’s when I was very young. It was along the lines of what is described in the audio play: a hole was dug down below our house in Cape Cod and every time we filled it in, it was dug again, happened maybe three times in 10 days. My mother lived alone with us during the week and I think my Uncle came to bear witness. There was an Officer Grant, whose visit lead to nothing. I also almost drowned that year, and my brother saved me. The story of the Hole Digger had taken on a folkloric status among my family and next-door neighbors, made more resonant because there was never any resolve to it. And... I was haunted by the whip-or-will at night. You don’t hear them anymore.

I have often thought of how to translate these recollections into a script or short story, and had in the last year started telling some improvised version to my kid as a spooky bedtime tale. So that’s why it was on my mind when the radio show assignment came up. It was precisely telling stories to my kid, unrehearsed, on the fly, in the dark, that had me thinking about the spooky audio dramas I’d heard when I was young. That’s why I was playing old time radio shows in the car when Glenn McQuaid said to me “Glass Eye Pix could do a radio show.” One thing had lead to another. And somehow I knew that my episode had to be about the Hole Digger.

VO: The Hole Digger is a rather somber piece and relies far more upon mood rather than outright, visceral terror. Was this a conscious decision for you and if so, what prompted it?

LF: Glenn can attest, I was tortured by my decision to make a mood piece, rather than something pulpy and fun and even up until the mix I lamented my impulse to tell this tale. But scheduling circumstance caused me to write the story very fast, even after 40 years’ rumination, so I had no time to second guess. It was in some ways very visceral, and in the end a real expression of my artistic voice: somber and moody. I had said from the get-go that I would be evoking such influences as TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD, STAND BY ME and the writings of Algernon Blackwood. An artist’s main job is to be true to his or her vision and get it right, that’s really the one thing you can offer.

VO: The episode’s sound design is quite rich with realistic sounds and effective musical scoring, giving it a very naturalistic feel versus radio dramas’ more theatrical mood. How did you come upon crafting the aural landscape and was it a process that was fairly preplanned or did you figure out what you wanted to hear as you went along?

LF: I think when we embarked on TALES, we felt that today’s audiences are very sophisticated and they can listen to radio drama in a new way, and take in more than just dialogue and a creaky door. I had a very clear sense of what I wanted to hear from the get-go. It had to be authentic to the location, and I designed the piece like a film, with close-up sounds, perspective shifts and hard cuts. I wanted to do radio that felt immediate, overheard— I wanted to put the viewer in a very real place and pursue my usual themes of unnatural goings-on in an everyday setting.

And so the dialogue in THE HOLE DIGGER is very offhand (except for the voice-over which is more literary), and I encouraged the actors to be completely natural. Then with sound design you are controlling every rhythm, every texture and completely building an artificial sound-scape. Like a shot in a film or a sentence on the page, each audio event plays off the one before and a story and mood unfolds. It’s really like orchestrating a musical album where voice, ambiences, and effects are the instruments that combine to transport the listener.

VO: Going back to the tale’s autobiographical nature, how was it for you diving back into your own memory and examining it in order to craft your story? Has this process of examination affected your own memory or perspective on the real life incident itself?

LF: There seems to be a tradition of writers who draw on childhood memories, those first impressions and experiences in life when all the world has a magic realism about it. I had a rather plain childhood, but I was sensitive and had an over-active imagination. With most of my work now I am still trying to capture some of my earliest impressions. I heard recently that the time of the Hole Digger corresponded with the disappearance of some teenage girls on the Cape, whose bodies were found chopped up in plastic bags. Maybe our little story was part of something truly disturbing... Maybe there’s a feature film in it after all. Or maybe that’s just the mythmaking continuing on.

VO: Finally, as one of the series’ co-creators, what are your thoughts thus far on this first season of Tales From Beyond The Pale and the response you have garnered from listeners and fans? TALES has been an absolute dream: none of the financial pressures of a feature film, great collaborations and a lovely partnership with Glenn McQuaid, Lisa Wisely (our unseen producer) and the good people at DigIt Audio, a company that we work with on feature films but who nevertheless had to go out on a limb and beyond the pale to support us on this one.

And to the listener: We are looking forward to new ways to make these tales available— through iTunes, Amazon, on CD (with Gary Pullin’s f-ing fantastic artwork!) and finally, on the radio some night when you least expect it. Every Tale is worthwhile, and in a time when there is so much media, it seems genuinely cathartic to just sit down, close your eyes, and listen... Hope you’ll join us.

To check out this episode, go to www.talesfrombeyondthepale.com