by Brian Posehn
I didn’t hate Ken once he wasn’t fucking my mom anymore. Weird how that works. He inherited my tan Members Only jacket when I turned into a giant after high school, and he wore it forever. My friend Dan would say, “I saw your jacket walking down Highway 12 today.” Ken passed away a long time ago. And locals say you can still see him walking down Highway 12 in my Members Only jacket. Spooky!
THIRTEEN
METALLICA
Metallica is my metal Star Wars. I’ve been a fan of both forever, and yet I can’t think of another movie or heavy-metal band that has let me down more and then won me back as a fan. KISS would be, but if we’re going to be metal nerds about it—and we are—KISS are not metal, strictly speaking. And they haven’t won me back as a listener. As I said earlier, I don’t enjoy the new shit, but I’ll still crank the crap out of “Detroit Rock City” or Animalize. Or even Dynasty.
Metallica, however, after twenty years of varying degrees of disappointment, won me back just last year with their latest record, Hardwired… to Self-Destruct. Amazing fucking record. As I write this, I’m heading to see Metallica play a giant rock show at the Rose Bowl. They’re touring the new record, and I got a hook-up, so I couldn’t say no. Put it this way: I know a dude.
Let’s start at the beginning of Metallica, because that’s when I got into them: 1982–83. I heard “Hit the Lights” first on a Metal Blade compilation, Metal Massacre; the record also featured the debuts of Ratt and Steeler featuring Yngwie. Hardly anyone at my school knew about Metal Massacre, but it was a hit tape among my friends, Baden and Krop. Our small Sonoma metal circle included these other guys—KC, Mike, and Tim.
Tim later created a bunch of video games and owns a successful game company. He used me in his game Brutal Legend as a voice actor. Shortly after we heard Metal Massacre there was a full Metallica demo tape going around called No Life ’Til Leather. I’m pretty sure KC hooked us up with a copy of that; he was kind of a rich kid and must’ve been at the record store more than me because he always had killer shit, but this, I think, he got through tape trading with a pen pal.
“What’s a pen pal, Grandpa Metal?” you ask. Well, in the old days you would make a friend just through writing letters. You’d see an ad in the heavy-metal magazines and would find someone who liked the same bands and had similar interests as you, like “I love Venom and shooting cats.” Then if you also liked the British band Venom and shooting cats you would send that guy or gal a letter through the US Postal Service, and then you would start trading tapes with your weird new pal. (I don’t like Venom or shooting cats—well, I’ve only tried one of them, so maybe I’ll check out Venom. Ha! See what I did?)
Anyway, Krop and Baden and I were into Metallica the second we heard “Hit the Lights.” Soon they had their first full-length album, Kill ’Em All. I was slightly put off by the imagery on the cover—the hammer, the blood, the garish implied violence—but I loved the music. The aggression, the riffing, the attitude, the memorable sing-along choruses, the Metallica-ness—I’d never heard or seen anything like it.
Then one night we drove to see the German metal band Accept at the famed Kabuki Theater in San Francisco. We had missed Metallica’s Kabuki show a couple of nights previous, and here they were, checking out the show. We were fans, and we had to tell them. As we approached them I took the lead. Me: “Hey man, you shred.” Kirk looked at us, fake confused and smart-alecky, “Shred? I don’t even cook.” Ugh, we were shaken. We should have walked away, but we kept going.
Then I cornered James Hetfield, attitude pouring off the lead singer, “Hey, James, my friends are starting a band. What should they call themselves?” He looked at the three of us and Krop and Baden’s new jackets and said, “Almost.” I wish that story ended with me telling him to fuck off and the fact that I never listened to Metallica again. Instead, I followed them forever and spent a ton of money on them.
I knew a dude named Duncan who thought Metallica sold out in 1984. When I met Duncan, he was a shit-bag and I think I was one of the only kids in the neighborhood who would talk to him. I was the only metalhead within blocks, but every time I talked to Duncan it was a competition, an assault on my metalness. When Ride the Lightning came out, he cornered me and gave a lecture on what a misstep it was. They sold out, he told me. He clearly thought I was a poser and he’d school my dumb poser ass on Metallica.
He also said he fucked a girl at a Slayer show. In the pit he fucked some girl he just met. Sure, it’s plausible now because I’ve seen some crazy shit at metal shows, but I remember at the time thinking, No, you didn’t. Through the whole story all I could think was, Um, nope. Wow, this never happened. Duncan also only liked Kill ’Em All. And his favorite band member was Dave Mustaine. The guy they had kicked out. He said Kirk Hammett couldn’t play. Two years into Metallica’s career Duncan was off the Metallica train. I later wrote a song about Duncan called “More Metal Than You.” It was about a famous guy too.
Most of the time when you meet another metalhead, it’s like meeting a brother or sister you never met, but every once in a while you meet a dude who makes it a competition. I like/liked a lot of metal. There isn’t a lot of metal that I really didn’t like. I have no guilty pleasures—I like what I like, and I don’t care what you think. Okay, Warrant, and I probably like Depeche Mode more than you’d think or be comfortable with. But this is about metal.
With metal it’s not about your knowledge. Yet with some guys, it is. But mostly metalness is judged by attitude and how hardcore you are, how outwardly metal you are. You can only really wear one band shirt at a time, so people show their metal in different ways—apparel, piercings, long hair. Not me. I would look fucking ridiculous still trying to “look” metal now. Those jeans are stupid, and fitted Affliction shirts would look silly as fuck on me. Certain guys can pull it off, and by that I mean, you would never say anything to them about it.
I was obsessed with finding faster and heavier bands, and soon I discovered Anthrax and Exodus, Testament and Death Angel, but I stayed loyal to Metallica because those early albums meant so much to me. They were my metal band. They are now everybody’s metal band. And for a reason: there aren’t many bands better at writing tight catchy tracks of focused aggression. And fuck Duncan: Metallica got better with each record. By Master of Puppets they were unbeatable; they set the bar in metal. You could be more evil, faster, and more frenetic than Metallica, but you were never gonna be better than them. Even they couldn’t beat it.
The next two records, And Justice for All and The Black Album, sold more records and made Metallica the biggest metal band in the world, but they weren’t better records than Master of Puppets. Thirty-five-plus years after their formation, Metallica—or metal’s Rolling Stones—still feel like my band. I’ll always be a Bay Area kid, and they will always be the Bay Area’s best band. Even when they make three terrible records in a row. Even when they slowed down, cut their hair, and made a documentary showing all their flaws. Even when they make a record where it sounds like they tracked their drums with garbage cans. Even when they were assholes to me, I still loved Metallica.
Metal fans can be fickle, but we can also be fiercely loyal. So because I found this local band through tape trading and they made six classic albums that defined my teen years and early twenties, they will always be my band. And… because I saw them live tons of times, spent thousands of hours cranking their music and hundreds of nights pounding beers with friends and head-banging and screaming along to “Blackened” like fucking drunk idiots in a parking lot, they will always be my band. Could be worse. There are a million shittier bands.
FOURTEEN
HORROR NERD
I devoured film, but horror was the genre I connected with the most and is a big part of me. Horror movies are the Indian burial ground we built Brian Posehn on. The references to famous monsters and killers and the names of my favorite horror directors have been a part of my stand-up act for a long time. And during all those hours of looking for the n
ext scare, I had no idea I would wind up in a modern horror classic.
So let’s go back to the seventies, when the obsession started for me. Dracula, Godzilla, and King Kong were pretty fucking great, but they all belonged to someone else. They were old movies and had come from a different time. I would really connect with horror films when I found the stuff from my time. But first I would stumble on a truly scary classic in stark black and white on Friday night television.
I had read Jaws, the Jaws 2 adaptation, and adaptation of “Jaws in the forest” schlock-classic Grizzly, but nothing would prepare me for William Peter Blatty’s The Exorcist. I read The Exorcist before I saw the terrifying movie. My mom had bought the massive bestselling paperback and never finished it. It was the scary elephant in the room. I knew what it was. I had heard the movie made people shit their pants and throw up and blow their heads off or something, so I snuck it off my mom’s bookshelf. I loved the novel, but I was so terrified that I would gladly wait a couple of years to see it on a small screen.
I saw The Omen adaptation on the paperback rack at a grocery store with my grandma; she let me get it. More points for Grandma Clara. Both devil-themed movies, The Exorcist and The Omen would later creep me out and give me strange ideas, but what really started my horror obsession was the terrifying black-and-white intro to zombies, Night of the Living Dead. As I mentioned before, I’d seen it by chance on TV on one of my mom’s date nights with Ken the Monster, and it stuck. The opening of that movie stirred up a sense of dread I’d never felt before and kept it going all the way to its shocking climax. And it was an important racial allegory that still holds up. George Romero’s classic was my zombie bite that led to a full-blown horror infection.
I heard about my favorite horror film ever one Sunday afternoon on a church group day trip. We were driving over the hill to go mini-golfing, and an older girl in my group was telling her friend about the movie Halloween. I eavesdropped for a while and then just came clean: I wanted to know everything about Halloween. She told us most of the plot. It sounded scary and incredible. I saw it a couple of months later—she didn’t sell it hard enough. It was earth shattering. The pacing, the terror, the heroine. You wanted Laurie Strode to live. Donald Pleasance rules as Dr. Loomis. But what stuck with me and made me a horror fan forever was the menacing, unstoppable villain/hero of the movie, Michael Myers. Tons of sequels and other slasher movies would follow, but Halloween was the original and is still the perfect horror movie.
In the next couple of years I would see hundreds of horror movies. It was a great time for them, and I wanted to see them all, good and bad. I saw Carrie before I read it or knew who Stephen King was, but the two instances had a lot to do with me becoming a massive Stephen King fan. Carrie’s Sissy Spacek and the explosive relationship she had with her mom, Piper Laurie, made me feel normal. That movie zips by with one iconic scene after another. Great acting and direction really make a difference.
I saw Alien on HBO at a friend’s house in the middle of the day, and we were scared shitless. I remember his parents making fun of us for being scared, and then we watched Blues Brothers for the tenth time to get our minds off of Alien. If you haven’t seen Alien, I’m not sure we can be friends, reader. Sorry. But of course, you’ve seen the sci-fi horror classic.
Friday the 13th I viewed in the theater with no spoilers. Had no idea what I was in for. It scared the crap out of me. The nervous, scared energy was a lot of fun. During the famous beheading of Mrs. Vorhees, I yelled, “Don’t lose your head, lady!” Everybody laughed. I liked that feeling a lot—making strangers in a dark room laugh at something I made up out of nowhere—almost more than being scared. I love the original that started it all, but the sequels became a lifelong obsession. Jason Vorhees is my spirit animal.
During the early eighties, horror movies came at me fast, and I happily devoured them. I saw Piranha on cable. I liked the gore and the violence, but I didn’t love the cheapness of Piranha. I liked my horror more slick and mainstream. I saw The Omen II a couple of times in the theater. We even read the scene in my freshman drama class. The midnight movie Dawn of the Dead didn’t scare me, but I couldn’t believe how gory it was. Romero’s follow-up to Night of the Living Dead would easily hold up to repeat viewings. When I first saw Texas Chainsaw Massacre, it felt wrong, like I was watching something I wasn’t supposed to see, like a snuff film. That is definitely what Tobe Hooper was going for, though. It still combines horror and dread with an unshakable sense of “ick.”
I was leveled by John Carpenter’s remake of The Thing; the combo of Kurt Russell and John Carpenter would become a big one for me. I was a fan of their first team-up, Escape from New York, and would later lose my shit over Big Trouble in Little China, but The Thing was where I fell in love with the Russell/Carpenter combo. It blew me away and was a repeat rental.
I’ve always liked it when comedy is mixed with horror. The first one I saw was Return of the Living Dead. Another flick I loved renting and rewatching was Evil Dead II—it was the perfect combo of laughs and scares. During the late eighties I watched Evil Dead II on video with a bunch of people dozens of times. It’s so fun and completely holds up over time. There is an alternate universe where Bruce Campbell is the biggest star in the world, and I’d like to live in that universe. I totally prefer Evil Dead II’s sillier tone over the more serious Evil Dead. At the time I loved Jeff Goldblum in The Fly remake, although some of the “comedy” in that didn’t feel completely intentional.
I liked watching horror films with friends, but I really love watching them alone, in a theater or in front of my TV, checking out new ones or repeat viewing the same flicks over and over. In the forty years I’ve watched horror movies I’ve been mostly open minded; I’ve checked out everything. But not everything stuck. My taste is pretty mainstream. Carpenter is still my all-time favorite horror director. I generally prefer studio horror over low budget, although Halloween was an independent.
And I like gore and practical effects, but not sleazy horror. I’m not a B-level or Z-grade guy; I didn’t love the Spanish and Italian stuff I sampled from the seventies. I don’t love the trend of torture porn, and I bum out when it feels too exploitive. The repeat-watch horror flicks, from Halloween to Monster Squad to Near Dark—it’s strong characters, genuine scares, and great effects that have kept me a fan boy for so long.
So when my buddy was in Rob Zombie’s first movie, House of 1000 Corpses, I have to admit I was a little jealous. I loved heavy metal and horror movies; my buddy didn’t love either. I would never say that to him, of course. Instead, I said, “Hey, congrats on the zombie flick.” He said, “Thanks, man. You know, you and Rob should meet.” Me: “Okay.” So the next time he got invited to Rob’s, he brought me. We hit it off. Rob watched sitcoms, specifically Everybody Loves Raymond, so he knew who I was. What a cool dude, and I’d been a White Zombie fan since the beginning.
I played Jimmy in The Devil’s Rejects; I was the roadie for Lew Temple and Geoffrey Lewis and their country band. It was always Rob’s intention that I get killed. Originally he wrote me as a serial killer traveling Route 66 in an ice cream truck. When he decided to lose that scene, Rob said to me, “Hey, I’m not gonna have you be the ice cream truck guy, but do you want to play the comic relief and then they kill you right away?” I was so stoked this was even happening, I said, “Dude, whatever you want, I’m there.”
I die a pretty brutal death: shot in the face, super-close range. And then I laid there playing dead while the Three’s Company lady (Priscilla Barnes) gets raped with a gun. Yuck—my mom will never see it. The shoot was so fun and easy; Rob is one of the coolest directors I’ve ever worked with. It might’ve helped that we were friends, but he was amazing with the whole cast—such a mellow, funny guy. I was on set for five days. Two days for our dialog scenes. It was a dream to act with Geoffrey Lewis, Clint Eastwood’s pal in so many classic movies. I improvised a couple of lines, and they stuck. We shot my death scene on the third day.
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And then I had to play dead for two days. Had to? Got to. Kane Hodder (Jason Vorhees in four Friday the 13ths) was the stunt coordinator, and he showed me how to take a bullet. Rob had Kane take me off set. Kane warned me how loud it was going to get and then fired a gun at my face and said, “See, it’s loud,” and I said, “Yep.” It was crazy loud. But also very exciting. We went back on set and did it for real. I loved having an apparatus attached to me so when I got shot, blood and skull debris would be pumped from the back of my head and all over my fellow actor, Lew Temple. It was a gnarly effect, and I was in horror nerd heaven.
Of all the things I’ve done, Rejects is the one I’m still most proud of. I have a blast every time I get to be in the same room as the cast. We did a ten-year reunion screening at the Hollywood Forever Cemetery a couple of years back, and it was a total blast. Horror fans love the movie, and the cast is a staple at horror conventions.
Because I have a whole comedy career that I’ll tell you about in a minute, I rarely get to attend horror cons as a special guest. I do get to go to them as a paying guest when I stumble upon one, though. Horror nerds are pretty loyal in general, but Rejects fans are an especially voracious group—I have signed many a poster or DVD cover in the last twelve years.
I love seeing horror T-shirts in my audience—that means I’m probably going to sign some Rejects merch after the show. It’s an incredibly fucked-up film to have as your favorite flick, and yet most of the fans I’ve met seem totally normal and cool. And there’s the few who make you want to bathe in bleach after meeting them, and some would like to bathe you in bleach and way worse.
FIFTEEN
