Deciween: John Dies at the End

Posted October 25 by Shawn Macomber

Let’s be right out with it, shall we? John Dies at the End is an extraordinarily original piece of work. David Wong—pseudonym of Cracked.com editor Jason Pargin—somehow manages to unite horror subgenres which at first blush should gel about as well as Barry Manilow and Scott Hull. Snappy, fast moving dark comedy ala Joe Lansdale easily slips inside an epic narrative the likes of which has perhaps not been seen in horror since Clive Barker’s The Great and Secret Show; the sophisticated wryness of Joe Hill’s 20^th Century Ghosts mollusks onto classic John Hughes dork heroism. (Don’t simply take my word for it: Phantasm/Bubba Ho-Tep director Don Coscarelli has already snapped up the film rights.) And what Decibel reader couldn’t appreciate a novel wherein the demonic forces threatening to destroy the world are represented by an annoying reggae-mon dude and a nu-metal nerd in a Limp Bizkit T-shirt—a band Wong notes “invented the musical technique of feeding a list of generic rap phrases to a goat, then reading its turd into a microphone over heavy metal guitar”—and the viable deadly weapons of the good include an original composition, “Camel Holocaust,” and 80s hair metal?

Wong graciously provides Decibel the lowdown on his unlikely phenomenon.

You were working 75 hours a week as a data entry clerk when you first began writing the story that would become this novel. I couldn’t help but notice the protagonists are small town working class everymen—playing in shitty bands, employed on the low-wage circuit—who wind up uncovering a much more expansive and grandiose world at play than anyone around them is able to perceive. Was it liberating to explore and create such a universe while you were locked down in The Grind?

I'm a daydreamer so I've been escaping boredom that way since middle school. People love to ask, "Where do you get your ideas?" It really comes down to sitting in a cubicle, staring at the clock and finally thinking, "I wonder how we would defend this place from a zombie attack…" But that’s also one of the keys of the story: David still works in a video store even after he finds himself embroiled in this dark inter-dimensional war. This isn't Lord of the Rings. He can't take off on this wonderful adventure and leave the world behind. He doesn't have any paid vacation days to use. He still has to go to work every day, or else he can't buy food.

John Dies at the End is essentially a blog post that kept going, slowly garnered a massive word of mouth audience and eventually landed you a book deal. Do you now better understand Tim “Ripper” Owens?

The thing is…I never shopped this book around to publishers, because I thought it was just too weird for publication. It was this niche thing on the Internet, full of crude humor and battles fought where weapons include rap/metal karaoke and a pooping dog. I pictured some white-haired editor being insulted by it. "Who keeps bringing me this Internet trash to read?" So I had built myself up in my mind as being a book-writing rebel, spitting in the face of the establishment and...the establishment has been nothing but polite. I've got publications like Publisher's Weekly, Kirkus Reviews and Library Journal all singing its praises. On one hand it's great. On the other, this was the book that was supposed to make their monocles fall into their tea. Instead they're all like, "I really enjoyed the part about the boners. I hope Wong explores that theme further in the next episode."

And now John Dies at the End is slated to be adapted into a film by Phantasm/Bubba Ho-Tep director Don Coscarelli!

I actually didn't reply to the first email I got from Don asking about film rights. I thought it was a joke. Phantasm was one of the first horror movies I ever saw—my mom took me to a Halloween midnight showing back in the 80s when I was probably 10 years old. Every horror movie since has been a disappointment compared to it because they so often color inside the lines—mysterious monster appears, heroes learn the nature of the monster, heroes kill the monster—and man, Phantasm does not do that. If you find yourself able to predict where the plot of Phantasm is going, you belong in a damned straightjacket. And Bubba Ho-Tep is one of the best parodies of that standard horror setup you'll ever see. So…you find yourself working with your idols and sort of nervously waiting for the day they realize their mistake and take it all away. "We're sorry, we thought we were talking to a real author here, not some data entry clerk who writes a bunch of poop joke horror for a dozen friends on the Internet."

Your book is so off the hook I’m curious what you’d cite as influences.

I did a book report on Stephen King's The Stand when I was twelve. The only bookstore where I grew up was a Walmart, so in those days my horror intake consisted entirely of Stephen King paperbacks. When you read Clive Barker or H.P. Lovecraft, you're reading otherworldly fantasies. With Stephen King, the characters are drinking Pepsi and driving Chevys and living in towns just like the one I grew up in. It makes everything seem so freaking plausible, the way the horror springs out of the familiar. That stuck with me, and I've tried hard to keep my story grounded the way he always did. But then in high school I discovered Douglas Adams' Hitchhiker series and fell in love with that cranky, reluctant main character and the droll narrator. Glue those two things together and you get a novel where a mass of sentient cockroaches take over the main character's car, and the first thought that comes into his head is whether or not his auto insurance will pay for something like that.

Have those who know you primarily from your work in Cracked and National Lampoon been surprised you’re also able to render blood, guts, and monsters so well?

Horror and comedy are closer than you think. It's not as much of a stretch as it would be if I had, say, written a 900-page nonfiction book about the Holocaust. Laughter is how we deal with fear, and the best jokes are always the ones that poke around the fear centers of our brain. Frat guys love jokes about gays and dumb blondes because their sexual identity is so important to them, and they fear any threat to it. Southerners have loved racist jokes since the first day they saw their former slaves walking around free. If you know what makes a person laugh, you also know what they fear.

There’s been a lot of social handwringing over “torture porn,” and, while I’ve personally written a provisional defense of the subgenre, it does appear as if the great horror-comedy tradition of the 1980s has been a little lost in the shuffle of maimed limbs and viscera that passes for horror zeitgeist today. John Dies at the End frequently feels like a reaction to this milieu.

It is, in a way. But I don't think a person can write by sitting down and saying, "What is the marketplace missing right now?" You find yourself frustrated that nobody is writing the exact kind of books you want to read or making the movies you want to see. I don't doubt that a young Eli Roth was continually frustrated by slasher movies that didn't take it far enough, or that cut away right at the most gruesome moments, and finally made the movie he always wished others were making. For me, I never really found a horror comedy that didn't, in the course of making you laugh, accidentally undo the horror by removing the danger to the characters. I loved the idea of doing a legitimately scary story that was funny because of the point of view of the narrator. Not because I thought the market wanted it, but because I thought it would be awesome.

Future plans?

I'm writing a sequel, and by "writing" I mean I have a bunch of notes laying around that I intend to turn into the sequel. After that, who knows? I'll tell stories as long as people seem to want to hear them. If years from now the publishing deals dry up and I can't make a living doing it, so be it. I'll go back to writing for my friends on the Internet and feeling like a rebel again.

Finally, how far removed from Jason is David Wong?

David bitches and moans and sounds like a coward, but when faced with danger, he still comes through. I would do the opposite. I would talk tough and then run away. And I'd have a story later that made me sound like a hero.

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