An interview with Andrea G. Colombo, a veteran of the Italian horror scene who has been entertaining and frightening fans of the genre with website, books, and magazines for about eighteen years.
A: Who is Andrea G. Colombo?
B: A guy with many passions, many fixations, a chronic screw-up, pathological glutton, hates collections and knick-knacks, loves action movies, martial arts and his two black cats, Lucifer and Attila...
I have been cultivating a passion for fiction and hard-edged films, horror and thrillers, for years. I find the supernatural, spy stories, complex plots intriguing. I read a lot, watch a lot of movies. TV shows, on the other hand, I hardly follow: staying tied to a weekly date annoys the hell out of me. I have two or three series that I am fond of and never miss.
A: How did your passion for horror in both literature and film come about?
B: In one form or another I think it has always been my passion. Even as a child I loved stories of a certain kind, I liked to invent tragic and dramatic tales. I used to watch horror on TV with one eye, terrified but too curious to stop. Then I started devouring novels, and I couldn't get enough of them. True love, systematic and conscious, struck in my twenties with a Stephen King novel, Misery. Before then I was watching and reading a little bit of everything, but it was with that novel that something clicked and I started reading almost only horror.
A: Have you ever wondered why you like horror? What is the answer?
B: I like stories with strong colors, emotions. And there is nothing more exciting than a story in which the protagonist's life is at stake. Life and death, no pun intended. What more can you ask for?
A: What are the books you would never part with?
B: In general, all the classics that formed me. I have a special bond with each of these volumes. I'm talking about hundreds of books by different authors, read one after another, bulimically. King, Barker, Lovecraft, Poe, Matheson, Bradbury, McCammon, Laymon, Klavan, Koontz, Lansdale. More specifically, I have a very strong connection with two volumes in particular, both with autographed dedications by the author: one by Joe Lansdale (which I brought to Italy years ago) and the other by Richard Matheson, who autographed it for me a few months before his passing. It is a copy of Nightmare at Six Thousand Yards for which I reserved a special compartment of the bookcase in my study. A shrine of sorts!
A: Tell us about your first short stories and early publications? What memories do you have of that period?
B: I am not particularly attached to my early work. In the early days you experiment, as you should, you work hard and try to learn a lot. But you produce things that when you reread them years later, you struggle to really feel they are yours: too different in style, sentence construction, basic ideas. Of everything I wrote in the early experimental years I barely save only a couple of short stories. Different is the memory of that period. Drawing a parallel with the current situation, I would say that there were far fewer possibilities for publication, but there was an enthusiasm that I struggle to experience today. It may be age...
A: Many of your short stories (Swear, Dead Head, The Asphalt, The Devil's Fork, Boxed) have been published in collective books and you were the editor of two horror anthologies, 1999's Metropolitan Spectres and 2000's Jubilaeum. Are you currently working on any new literary projects?
B: I'm collecting the short stories I'm most fond of (seven, eight at most) to make an anthology to be distributed for free in eBook through Hbooks, the publishing container of Horror.it. It's sort of my last homage to the short fiction I struggle more and more to practice. I already have the title and cover ready, I just need some editing to make the more dated stories more current. After that closed practice, I will devote myself heart and soul to the thriller that I have been planning for a few months now and that I must hurry up to write, since the publisher is waiting.
A: The Deacon was an experiment you ran on Horror Mania in which you involved several authors. In 2010 it was published by Gargoyle Books under Andrea G. Colombo. Can you tell us about this novel?
B: The truth is that "The Deacon" first began as a novel project. Then I got the idea to exploit it in Horror Mania to introduce the character to the magazine's readers, devising a "light" and completely different version of the story. The character was immediately well received by the magazine's readers, so I realized that the novel idea was not so crazy, and when I closed Horror Mania, I could devote myself to it full time.
The story tells of the eternal struggle of good and evil, but from a different perspective than the classical canons. Evil and good are not as definable as we think, and sometimes a goal can be pursued by following unorthodox paths. In the world I created, the balance between the forces at work was broken by "something," an event that remains mysterious until the end of the novel. This event, made it possible for Evil, to penetrate with increasing ease into our reality by using human beings as doors, wide-open gates through which Evil can break in and infect our reality. Thus a terrible entity can burst into our midst, dragging with it all the horror that for millennia has been painstakingly kept at bay. Our salvation lies in the hands of a small group of exorcist monks and their shadowy confrere, "The Deacon," precisely, a man with no memory, no name, no past. The most powerful exorcist ever to appear on earth since the time of Jesus Christ....
A: You designed and edited as editor two horror magazines, Horror Mania and Horror Time. After the glories of the first one you wanted to try again with Horror Time. Why did this project fall apart after only four issues?
B: In truth, it's not that I "wanted to try again" with Horror Time: I was offered to design a new horror magazine from scratch. Paolo Zelati and I took a few weeks to think about it, because we had a lot of doubts about it, then we decided to try anyway, despite nothing to suggest that it would go smoothly given the situation. But we love a challenge...
The problem is that if you are not part of one of the big publishing groups that bring products to the newsstands (Mondadori, Cairo, Rizzoli, Condé Nast) you have to rely on distributors who will be paid not to do their job. It sounds absurd but that's the way it is. We spent months collecting complaints from readers who couldn't find the magazine on newsstands and then turned them over to the publisher in the hope that the distributor would do something, but it didn't help.
The distributor is not obliged to provide any document ascertaining the newsstand distribution of the product, nor is he obliged to clarify the terms of service, and therein lies the drama of the situation. The consequences of the Bersani law on the industry, have been devastating. We used to make a monthly magazine that would stay on the newsstand for less than a week: the newsagent would return the magazine before you had to pay for it, that is, a few days after you received it. So you had to beg readers to look for the magazine by the truckload only in the first few days of release in their territory (which change from region to region, of course) because after those, the magazine became unavailable.
I don't know what you think, but to me this is pure delusion, so the only sensible thing to do was to say thank you, goodbye, and pack up.
A: Are you planning to launch a new magazine or do you think print publishing is nearing its end?
B: As far as I'm concerned with these experiments I'm done, because there are absolutely no conditions to be able to work seriously. On matters such as the fate of print publishing I don't pronounce myself. It's full of people announcing the end of this or that. It is a sport that I am not passionate about. I just do my job and stop.
A: Since 2000 you have been the manager of Horror.it, the first Italian horror website. What rewards has the portal given you over the years?
B: We started in '96 with "IT, the magazine of cyberspace," and have always transformed, year after year. In June, it will be 18 years that we've been doing online horror, we're coming of age. A sea of work repaid by a sea of satisfaction, and since we work for passion (Horror.it has always been strictly nonprofit), rewards are indispensable.
A: How do you assess today's horror environment on the web? Do you find any differences from the early years of Horror.it?
B: Abysmal. Without a shadow of a doubt. Today the Italian network is mature, rich, with a wide and sparkling offer. What is missing is the final clearance with the mass audience, but that is another story. Until there is a massive market, unfortunately, things will not change appreciably. It's bad to say, but the real difference is made by the market, not the cultural offer. However - at the end of the day - we are fine with that too....
A: You are a Stephen King fan. Which film adaptations of his works do you think are the most successful?
B: In defiance of what King himself thinks about it, I would start with The Shining. Movie and book are two different things, but the movie is wonderful. Then Carrie, in its original version, and Misery. I also liked a lesser film like The Mist, which had a certain "homegrown" flavor that doesn't hurt after all. Perhaps the most successful of all are the films based on non-horror works, such as Shawshank Redemption, The Green Mile, and Stand by Me. And let's not forget the TV movie based on IT, which in its naivete is all in all an enjoyable product.
A: Name the top ten horror films ever made.
B: I can only quote you my ten favorites. On the absolute best ones I'll pass. Too subjective. So, we were saying: Halloween, The Shining, Alien, The Exorcist, Rosemary's Baby, Point of No Return, Lord of Evil, The Seed of Madness, The Devil's Advocate, Elevator to Hell, The Ring. Okay that's eleven. Shall we leave it?
A: But yes, eleven is fine too! How do you relate to the new Italian horror cinema?
B: Bad.
A: Which contemporary directors would you mention without hesitation?
B: I literally worshipped Michael Night Shyamalan, I thought he could become the Hitchcock of the third millennium, then came the disappointments of And the Day Came and The Last Airbender and I'm afraid he was lost forever. I had loved Neil Marshall's The Descent and thought I had found a new cult author, then I saw Doomsday and I'm still staring at the screen in disbelief. I felt enthusiasm for Rob Zombie, then I saw him screw himself. I can't tell if he's thrown in the towel or if he's going to give us a tailspin. He can still pull it off. Let's just say, though, that I'm a little afraid to get attached to anybody at this point, but if I really have to name a name, my money's on James Wan. I like what he does with his films, his aesthetic and his imagery, I find them very much akin to my tastes. They don't hail him as a cult auteur, and maybe that's what saves him: he's a very honest filmmaker who knows how to do his job. And he does.
A: What do you think about this interview?
B: Challenging but fun. Thank you for suggesting it.
A: Can you leave a message for the DarkVeins community?
B: Have fun and spread the Word!
A: Thank you Andrea!
