TALES FROM BEYOND THE PALE INTERVIEW SERIES 10: JOHNNY BOY creator JT Petty

S&Man director JT Petty discusses his tale of parental fear and child possession "Johnny Boy"

Vegas Outsider: To kick things off, could you briefly summarize the premise for Johnny Boy and how the idea for it came to you?

JT Petty: JOHNNY BOY started with the thought of the baby monitor as a horror device. Telephones always ring way too loud in horror movies, the same way fluorescent lights buzz like a hive, anything to help the soundtrack make the audience tense. A baby monitor is one of the few devices that operate at a horror movie volume in real life.

Every new parent is so anxious about their child that they pump the volume all the way to 11 just to hear the baby breathing. You end up sitting in a dark room listening to a static hiss and sporadic wet breathing and lip smacks, which is basically the soundtrack to Eraserhead. It seemed a good way to get into the mechanics of a radio play.

VO: There is an ambiguity in terms of John's strange encounter with the old woman at the very beginning and Johnny Boy’s later possession. We suspect a connection but it is never elaborated. Was that intentional and is there a backstory there that you are aware of as the creator which is not consciously shared with the audience?

JT: The whole story is about how much you trust your spouse to raise your child, (or if you don't trust your spouse to raise your child, you'll end up dead with a spoon in your head.) I wanted to plant some doubt in Emily's head about her husband's fidelity, get some mistrust in there right from the start.

I also like the suggestions of an origin to Johnny Boy's possession that the skinny woman brings: maybe their unborn baby is cursed by a junky gypsy mad at John, or maybe they're haunted by an aborted bastard John sired unfaithfully, or whatever. But I wanted to leave that all pretty ambiguous. My favorite example of ghost story mythology is Nicolas Roeg's Don't Look Now, where it always seems like questions are scarier than answers.

VO: The story is told strictly from the mother’s POV and as events grow darker, we are left questioning her own sanity. How much should the audience trust her perspective on what transpires given that the audience isn’t really allowed another perspective to observe?

JT: I think she's actually a pretty trustworthy narrator. I guess there's always a line between the supernatural and lunacy, but everything she reports I imagined she experienced. Her mistakes are more about mistrusting her husband.

VO: Johnny Boy deftly taps into the fears and insecurities of parenthood, especially with infants. This material feels very personal and I’m wondering how much of your own life and experience may or may not feed into this episode?

JT: Yup, my daughter was just a little older than a year when I wrote JOHNNY BOY, so all the "sitting around feeling anxious about a too-loud baby monitor" was easy. And of course, who isn't scared of being haunted by their aborted bastards?

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