[Interview] Writer and Director Ron Oliver Wanders Down Memory Lane of Are You Afraid of the Dark?

HERE’S WHAT HAPPENED

After interviewing showrunner D.J. MacHale, we decided not to rest on our laurels. Like all diehard fans of a long-running series, we had more questions! We reached out to Ron Oliver, who directed seventeen episodes of the series in addition to writing two of them. He graciously agreed to “wander down memory lane” for us.

THE INTERVIEW

1. It’s the early ’90s, Nickelodeon greenlights Are You Afraid of the Dark? as a children’s show, and one of showrunner D.J. MacHale’s first steps is to hire the writer/director of R-Rated horror film Prom Night III: The Last Kiss to come on board and direct three episodes of the first season. What did that tell you about the mindset of the show?

Well, the first thing to remember is they were shooting the show in Montreal Canada, so they needed a Canadian director. And I had moved from Toronto to Los Angeles a couple years earlier after having made a couple of movies, so I was on radar. DJ had seen a few director’s reels I think, and watched a couple of movies….I was lucky in that I had a terrific DP named RHETT MORITA who guided me through my first directing gig (PN 3 was my first official directing job) so the movie looked better and more professional than I probably was at that time. But the tone of PN3 was definitely the direction they wanted to go with ARE YOU AFRAID….I remember meeting with DJ first and then with TERRY CASTLE (yes, the daughter of the famous horror producer director WILLIAM CASTLE! How cool is that?) and they both said they wanted the show to be scary but funny, dark but still humorous. I guess they felt I was the right guy for the job because I ended up with them for the five year run of the show.

2. There’s a whole generation of horror fans and creators who remember the series fondly, and often credit it with inspiring a love of horror, and the series really holds up. One of the aspects we’ve latched onto is how diverse the series was, routinely featuring people of color and queer-coded characters, especially during a very white, heteronormative ’90s. Did you have any idea while you were working on the series how progressive it was?

Oh definitely. DJ and Bill Bonecutter (our creative producer) and Nickelodeon’s execs, including Jay Mulvaney (sadly passed) were all about being inclusive. My first script for the show THE TALE OF THE FULL MOON is definitely about a family dealing with how to tell their kid that his uncle is gay. In our case, I just made him a werewolf, but all the rest of it’s the same - as the father says “there are lots of different kinds of families, Jed. This is ours.”  Pretty groundbreaking stuff for kid tv in the 90’s.

3. D.J. created Sardo on the page, but he’s credited you and actor Richard Dumont for bringing him to life since you directed his first episode, “The Tale of the Super Specs” (and two of his subsequent stories). He is such a campy, beloved character, and we like to think about him enjoying cocktails at his local gay bar when he’s not losing out on deals at the Magic Mansion. Can you tell us about his creation?

Richard Dumont is one of my dearest friends in the world - he’s straight as an arrow, but a wonderful actor who wanted to make Sardo into an iconic, theatrical character. "Camp as a row of chiffon tents", we used to say. Richard and I have done a couple other projects since then, and he’s always been a marvelous addition to my movies. I remember when we were working on the episode, both of us thinking “are we really going to get away with this?” The notion of Sardo as a failed theatrical star, one of those great matinee idols from the 40’s, was just too good to resist. And he kept a certain malicious tone to the character so even though he was funny, you still got the feeling that he was a little bit dangerous.

4. “Tale of the Dark Music” is one of the darkest episodes of the series, a fan favorite, and sprinkled with some dark humor that really lands. Did you ever have push-back for going too dark, or too camp on other episodes?

I loved doing “Dark Music” - it was really when I got a feeling for how the series worked. Camera wise we were doing some pretty sophisticated stuff for a kid show, and certainly the performances were excellent. But the real credit for a lot of the show goes to our amazing production design team - I think one of the things that made the original series work so well was the “weird” feeling of the Montreal/Quebec design work. There’s a “French” sensibility to it, especially in the clowns and jesters and dolls and monsters, which is unusual in American tv. Definitely gives it an original feeling.

We rarely got pushback for being too dark, but the aforementioned “Tale of the Full Moon” was, I recall, worrisome in some circles at the network as being a bit too “John Waters meets David Lynch”. I loved it, of course; I think that episode was banned in Britain though, something about the two boys breaking into the werewolf’s house being against the law.

5. Can you tell us about directing such strong talents as Melissa Joan Hart, Frank Gorshin, Ryan Gosling, and Gilbert Gottfried?

Melissa was lovely, a real pro, and was definitely headed for bigger things.

Frank Gorshin was, of course, a legend and we were all in awe of him. He was a lot of fun, had great stories, and we never felt that he was “slumming” by being on a kid show!

Gilbert Gottfried I knew before we worked together from his days doing stand-up when I lived in toronto. (I used to be a magician, so we worked some of the same comedy clubs) His persona on screen is entirely different from his quiet, soft spoken self, but he’s an incredibly talented and very funny man. I miss seeing him on screen, but I know he does a lot of voice work. He was a horror fan too, and my pal Tony Timpone (editor of Fangoria magazine for its glory years) used to tell me that Gilbert would come to the Starlog/Fango offices in New York and spend hours going through boxes of back issues…

As for Ryan “Goose” Gosling - we became close friends on that episode, and I was very proud to help him with his career in the early years. I became sort of a surrogate “big brother” to him, and helped him get established in L.A. He lived with me in a loft condo I had in Hollywood, and he’d go out on the balcony of his bedroom at night and play guitar. Our downstairs neighbors used to get quite annoyed, and I often wonder if they now think “wait, we had an Academy Award nominated actor keeping us awake at night??”  We’re still good friends, in fact, and Ryan was my best man at my wedding; i’m very very proud of the actor he became and, more importantly, the husband and father he is to his beautiful wife and family.

6. “Ghastly Grinner,” which you wrote and directed, is consistently ranked as a series fave throughout the fandom and Frankie is such a popular character, and pretty obviously a lesbian. Were there other characters in your stories who you viewed as queer?

Well, the previously noted Uncle/Werewolf of course in “Tale of the Full Moon”. But sexuality wasn’t really an element in the shows, so I wouldn’t say I particularly thought of characters as straight or gay; they were just “the characters” with lots of their own traits. The actors were sometimes bringing things to the parts which enhanced them, of course, and those “things” were sometimes subtextual. I do know a couple of our kid actors came to me many years later, having come out as gay, and thanked me for being a positive influence as an out gay man in the industry as far back as the late 80’s. So I’m proud of that!

7. You also wrote and directed “Full Moon,” which has a distinct Tim Burton-meets-John Waters vibe. Were either of these film makers a big influence for you?

As noted above. And yes, for sure, although honestly “Full Moon” is probably the truest expression of my own artistic sensibilities. I made movie when I was a kid that looked and felt exactly like it! (and that was quite a few years before Mr. Burton - although I would say when I first saw his short film “Frankenweenie” I thought ‘AT LAST, SOMEBODY SPEAKS MY LANGUAGE!"

8. As someone who’s written two episodes of Are You Afraid of the Dark?, maybe you can answer a burning question for us? Were the episodes written and then “assigned” to a storyteller in the Midnight Society? Or were they written with a storyteller in mind? 

 That’s a DJ question I think. I had almost nothing to do with the Midnight Society characters or their story telling; those were all shot in a couple of days usually at the beginning or end of the production season. I think I probably watched once or twice, but I don’t know really what the decision making was…. I’d ask DJ because he, above all of us, is the true guardian of ARE YOU AFRAID OF THE DARK. He’s a genius and a brilliant writer and, frankly, one of the best people i’ve ever known in our business…!!

OUR REACTION

Troy: How cool was that? I could eat up behind the scenes stories like these all day long and never grow tired of them. If I’ve ever wanted someone to write an autobiography, it would be Ron Oliver. A gay Canadian teen stage magician transitions to writing and directing film and television in LA and Canada with a career spanning four decades and continuing.

Erin: His lifepath totally speaks to my soul. “Camp as a row of chiffon tents”—I’m NEVER getting over that. Also, I just want to note that I fully nailed the gay subtext of “Full Moon” in our recap. *brushes shoulders off*

T: Mr. Oliver echoes something D.J. touched on, in that they let the child actors bring a lot to their performance. I’m sure some brought more than others. It’s more than commendable that the AYOTD? set was a safe space for young performers to be free to breathe.

E: Such truth. Now I’m gonna get all verklempt. I truly hope there are still spaces like that in the film and TV works. We still need them.

T: Lastly, many thanks to Ron Oliver for chatting with us. Readers can follow him on Instagram @ronoliver where he posts regularly.

E: His Insta posts are fantastic! Thanks, Mr. Oliver!