 Thanks for checking out this video and this is kind of a one-off to just kind of share a little something with you guys that I did recently that I was able to do because of Salem Horror Fest and Salem Horror Fest going online this year because of the pandemic, obviously. That would end up being kind of fortunate for me because then I didn't have to physically go to Salem, Massachusetts and I was able to do this fun thing, which the title should say, which is Virtually Meet Joe Dante, who is an awesome director, obviously, and I'm just gonna kind of tell you a little bit about my experience with it. I do have a video of me talking to him because that's one of the things they included with this kind of meet-and-greet they were calling it, but I'm not gonna put it up. I'll see if I can get permission to do that because I don't want to just do it without any sort of permission. So I'll just kind of talk about what I talked to him about because I remember it pretty well, but and then I'll also show you what else you got it. So what else I got with it? So it was, I think, $125 total and what you would get is 20 is an autographed poster, which is this, which had its own specific artwork done for the poster for the event and then you could fill out the information online about if you wanted it personalized to you and Joe Dante would do that and then they would end up shipping it to you. So obviously I got that. Then you would go on to Zoom and they would have like this one big room where people had it that was broken down in time slots where people would hang out for a little bit and then one by one they'd be broken off into other rooms, which is a room with, you know, Joe Dante to get five minutes to talk to Joe Dante. Which if you think about it is amazing because if you go to a physical horror convention or if you've ever been to one, you know that you don't get that much time to actually talk to the celebrities unless they don't have much of a line. So someone like Joe Dante would probably have a bunch of people in their line. So you would probably get if you're lucky a minute to talk to him. So the fact that you get five minutes and it's just you and him is a really cool experience. So I came up with some questions ahead of time that I wanted to ask him and what do we talk about? One of the things I want to talk to him about is Piranha, which I quite like. So there's a there's a scene in Piranha where they go into this lab. They find the secret government lab and there's a creature that's walking. It's like a claymation thing and he's walking in there. So I asked him, was there a larger role for this creature? Or was it just it was just going to show up and then that's it. So he basically said that he wanted it in the film in the show or in the movie, first of all, because he loved, you know, like Ray Harryhausen and stop motion animation. So that was a big reason it was in there. Now, originally, one of the plans was to have it show up at the end of the film. And there were two ways it was going to show up. One way was when the main characters were, you know, driving off into the sunset at the end, they would run it over in the road. It had gotten loose and it was running in the road and they run it over. Another was that it they see it kind of grown up to the giant proportions as the movie ends and it's, oh, no, here's another problem to deal with. So there was a purpose for that. Another one of the things I talked to Joe about was Jurassic Park and the fact that there was a possibility that he was going to end up directing Jurassic Park if the proper production company had or the proper studio had secured the rights to the film. Because there were like four involved. It was it was between a bunch of studios and they were each tied to a director. And it was either going to be obviously Steven Spielberg, who ended up doing it, Richard Donner, Tim Burton or Joe Dante. And when I found that information out, I was like, oh, my gosh, like what would a Joe Dante Jurassic Park have been like? So I had the opportunity to ask him. And what he had said is that he obviously would have made it way more grown up. He would have emphasized the horror elements to it a lot more. And it wouldn't have been as nearly as family friendly as it was as it ended up being. But he said he thought, you know, Steven Spielberg did a great job. Then he told me that one of his big things is he went out of his way to talk to Michael Crichton, the guy who wrote the book and the script for Jurassic Park and tell him, look, no matter who you go with, if you end up with Steven Spielberg, just make sure he doesn't make it too fluffy, too family friendly and make sure that he doesn't downplay the character of Hammond all that much because in the books, Hammond's not that good of a guy and he just didn't want him to get kind of like fluffed up and made to seem like just this jovial, nice guy. But actually that ended up happening in the film. But that was kind of his warning to him and saying, please just maintain this character from the book because Joe Dante had read the book and he loved it. So, yeah, so anyway. But those are the main things that we touched on when we were talking. And I also, you know, obviously just told him, I love this. I love that one of the things he was very interested in was the fact that I had said that I watched The Burbs when I was very young and it gave me nightmares that that was actually the first movie that ever gave me nightmares. And he laughed about that and thought it was cool. He got a kick out of it. So I say all this to say it was awesome. It was cool. And I hope that that while we're going through these times, as long as it stretches out that more organizations can put on online conventions like this and do these virtual meet and greets because they're great. They're a lot of fun. And in some ways, like I was saying, they're better than physically meeting the people because you get that dedicated time to really talk. And that's great. And then you also get the poster, which I have not opened up yet. I haven't seen it, so I don't know what it's looking like. So if I can even get to it. Oh, yeah, here we go. Getting it out of here. And I'll do the best I can to show it on here. But so this will be my first time seeing it. Oh, the color, it already looks really good. So first of all, there's a receipt in here, which is great. Nice. Yeah. And it's signed, obviously, as you would assume. Do the best I can to show it. See. So that was created for it. Obviously, you can see everything in there that's tied to Joe Dante films. They've got the gremlin. They got, you know, the werewolf, Mogwai. There's a piranha down there. All that good stuff. And you can see where it's signed down here. It says to Carl and Joe Dante. So that is an awesome poster to have. And it's pretty thick, actually. I don't know if you can really see it's, it's, you know, it's a durable and thick. I am probably going to frame this because this is pretty awesome. I love it. And I love the colors on it and the cartoonishness to it because Joe Dante has a cartoonish element to the way that he directs things, which I think is is cool. And one more thing that I wanted to say about how Salem Horror Fest did things with this, you know, virtual convention in meet and greet is when you were in the zoom in that initial room where you were waiting for your turn to meet Joe Dante, it was cool because they had a horror host who was available to just talk to people. So there was like an interactive element. You weren't just sitting there waiting and staring at other people on the screen. He was talking about Joe Dante and his films and talking to people about horror in general. And it created this cool conversation. And I believe his name was S.A. Bradley was the guy's name. His podcast is hell bent for horror. And I've checked it out since very good podcast. That guy is very knowledgeable, a big time horror nerd, which I say as a big compliment because I consider myself a horror nerd and he is way smarter than me horror wise. And I hope to attain his level of knowledge at some point. So just wanted to throw that extra information in there. But it was awesome. You don't really need to put any comments down there if you don't want to, unless you had any additional questions like how was Joe Dante or, you know, any specifics about it? But he was a nice guy. He's a very nice guy. But anyway, regardless of whatever, thanks for checking this video out. Do me a favor, though. Real quick, hit the subscribe button because that is your best way to repay me if you like any video I've ever done. And then also hit the notification bell and that way you'll know whenever I'm putting up, you know, movie reviews, doing live streams, doing, you know, one off videos like this or unboxings or any of that stuff. But thanks again for checking this out. Until next time, keep it brutal.