5 Things You Might Not Know About EERIE, INDIANA

Mar. 10th, 2021 09:01 am
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5. Tobey Maguire Played a Ghost

Before Tobey Maguire learned the Cider House Rules (which were about abortion or something) or re-invigorated then later ruined Spider-Man, he starred in an episode of Eerie, Indiana. In “The Dead Letter” Maguire plays an old-timey clothes-wearing ghost who enlists Marshall’s help in delivering a love letter to his former sweetheart. In a scene that is both touching and creepy, the young man is reunited with his love who is now a haggard old woman– it’s like a scene from Harold and Maude, or Madonna’s life.

4. The Show’s Co-Creator Also Wrote The Motorcycle Diaries

After Eerie, Indiana was cancelled, Jose Rivera (who co-created the show with Karl Schaefer) wrote the screenplay for the acclaimed film The Motorcycle Diaries. While the exploits of the famous Argentine revolutionary and noted T-Shirt logo model Che Guevara might seem like quite a departure from depicting children battling werewolves and zombies, it might interest you to know that Rivera began his career as a celebrated playwright. He also wrote for Family Matters, but you probably find that less impressive.

3. They Rebooted the Show Six Years Later

With the original show finding a new audience through syndication and a series of novelizations, a reboot of the original concept (that could also be considered a spin-off because it’s technically another dimension) was produced. In Eerie, Indiana: The Other Dimension, the original protagonists Marshall and Simon were replaced by their Bizzaro-world equivalents Mitchell and Stanley, played, of course, by entirely different actors. Sadly even the alternate universe iteration of the show lasted only one season.

2. Bob Balaban Directed Several Episodes

While famed director Joe Dante acted as a consultant for the show, and directed many episodes himself, another name you might recognize contributed heavily to Eerie, Indiana. Bob Balaban, who people know mainly for his acting roles in Christopher Guest’s films, Seinfeld, and Gosford Park, just to name a few. But Balaban is also an accomplished director, having helmed feature films such as the insane and underrated Parents, as well as My Boyfriend’s Back, the zombie romantic comedy that came out way, way before that sort of thing became trendy. He has also leant his cinematic chops to a myriad of TV programs including Oz and Tales From the Darkside. He directed three of the nineteen episodes of Eerie, Indiana.

1. It Had the Craziest Final Episode of All Time

Most TV shows try to up their game for the final episode, whether it’s Bob Newhart waking up in bed with his former TV wife, or Breaking Bad doing a bunch of things we’re not allowed to freely talk about on the internet yet. Even shows like The Prisoner or Lost that steered their finales firmly into the surreal didn’t have the chutzpah to do what Eerie, Indiana did. In a sly nod to The Twilight Zone episode “A World of Difference” Marshall discovers a script for a show called “Eerie, Indiana” and suddenly finds himself on the set of a TV show where his entire reality is revealled to be a fiction. His parents and friends are all actors and refer to him as “Omri Katz” (the name of the actor who plays Marshall). It’s probably the most existentially disturbing finale of any TV show, let alone a one intended for kids.
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Bob Balaban and Eerie Indiana

Sep. 20th, 2020 11:32 am
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hearnesque on Eerie Indiana and Bob Balaban

Aug. 6th, 2020 01:31 am
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Marshall and Simon on the set of Eerie Indiana

May. 24th, 2020 11:22 pm
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Black Mary Film Zine on Parents

Feb. 20th, 2020 10:04 pm
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I enjoyed going to the Film Society of Lincoln Center last week and seeing a weird horror comedy from 1989 directed by Bob Balaban called Parents, about a 1950s suburban family in which the sullen little boy suspects that his parents are cannibals. It was enjoyably messed up to watch, and Randy Quaid was excellent as the strict and unsettling father, he had this slow and measured way of speaking that always just barely hid a psychoticness below the surface. I also adored Sandy Dennis as the school social worker who was funny in a quirky way and had a more 70's hippie look in a 1950s-set film. The score by Angelo Badalamenti gave it that eerie vibe that he used in David Lynch films, of a creeping horror score set amongst ordinary suburban life.

Balaban did a Q&A after the film, and has a funny mix of a quiet voice with a dry sense of humor. The film was a heightened version of his own 1950s childhood, where family secrets were kept hidden from him until adulthood, where he didn't know what his parents' lives were like when he wasn't around, and he felt small and repressed in a environment where everything has to look perfect on the outside. He told a lot of interesting anecdotes about his career, like directing episodes of genre shows like Tales from the Darkside, Eerie, Indiana, and Amazing Stories. He surprisingly did not like directing My Boyfriend's Back (the next film showing after Parents) due to studio restraints, though he enjoyed working with the cast, including an eager and young Philip Seymour Hoffman, who was cast as a bullying jock, but assured Balaban that he could play any role and do it well. It was a good evening of seeing a really odd movie and listening to a pleasant chat with a renowned comedic actor and director.
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REVISITING ‘EERIE, INDIANA’ – THE ‘TWIN PEAKS’ OF OUR CHILDHOOD

Jan. 4th, 2020 11:19 am
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What I’m about to say may shock you, and it certainly wont apply to all of you reading this, but as a child born in the 1980’s, who was approaching my teens in the early 1990’s, I never understood my parents fascination with Twin Peaks. Sure, I get it now – but back in late 1992, as the show drew to its weird conclusion, it just seemed like bizarre drivel that was the television equivalent of playing a record in reverse. It might have summoned the Devil, but it was still complete nonsense to me.

But as one strange American town bowed out of the TV schedule, another took it’s place – Eerie, Indiana. Eerie was everything to me that Twin Peaks had been to my parents, except it was aimed at my generation – the MTV generation – it had a hip teen lead, and it appealed to my inner conspiracy theorist – the one that had for years tried to convince me my neighbors were aliens. Turns out, they were.

So what was Eerie, Indiana all about? Well, the premise was simple. Marshall Teller is your average American teenager growing up in New Jersey. Life is pretty good until one day, while out playing basketball with his homies, Marshall gets into a fight and is sent to live in Bel Air with his rich Uncle. OK, so I may have got that confused with another show of the same era, but Marshall and his family do end up moving to the suburbs of small town America for a quieter life. But what the Teller family didn’t anticipate was that the sleepy little suburb they’ve moved to just so happens to be a gateway to the bizarre.

At first, Marshall – played by the always awesome Omri Katz (Max from Hocus Pocus) – just sees the mundane in his new neighborhood, but slowly it becomes apparent that things aren’t quite as boring as they seem. When he befriends local loser Simon Holmes (Justin Shenkarow), Marshall’s eyes are opened wide to everything going on around him – it’s just a shame none of the adults believe him. Or is it just that they’re in on it?

Over the course of 19 episodes, Marshall and Simon set about trying to solve the mysteries of Eerie, including Tupperware that preserves human life, an ATM with a conscience, and a way ahead of its time parody on the current President of the United States. But Eerie, Indiana wasn’t just 19 standalone episodes. Unlike most kids TV of the time, Eerie, Indiana was actually a series of interlinked stories that actually went somewhere.

As a kid you may not have seen all the Easter eggs spread throughout the show, but they were there, and if you rewatch the show now you’ll realise just how sophisticated the writing style actually was. Much more sophisticated than a lot of the typical ‘family’ content airing at the same time. This had a lot to do with the first class writing team the show had, which featured talents that would work on hit series like The Outer Limits and M*A*S*H. The talent behind the camera was a veritable who’s who of Hollywood as well. Joe Dante (Gremlins) and Bob Balaban (Close Encounters of the Third Kind) all had a hand in bringing the show to the small screen at one time or another, which is a hell of a pedigree no matter which way you slice it.

Like the mythical Icarus though, Eerie, Indiana would eventually fly too close to the sun only to have its wings burned, nosediving into eventual cancellation a little over a year after it emerged. It would be brought back – in a fashion – as a hip new spin-off called Eerie, Indiana: The Other Dimension, but by that time – 1997 – the magic was lost. The show was a success because of the lightening in a bottle mixture of behind the scenes genius and on-screen magic. For a generation of kids in the early 1990’s, Omri Katz was a God, and without him Eerie, Indiana might as well have been Nowhere, Oklahoma (it’s a real place, Google it).

And so this brings us right back to 2017, 25 years after the show first aired, and Twin Peaks is back and as bizarre as ever. Like I said at the start of this article, I get the appeal of Twin Peaks now that I’m as old as my parents were when it was last on TV (God, I’m getting so old), but even now I’d still rather take a trip to Eerie, Indiana than Twin Peaks, Washington. Who knows, maybe we’ll get a revival of this show too, because let’s face it, the world as we know it today is suitably strange enough source material for a comeback.

I wonder what Omri Katz is up to these days?
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GrafOrlok22 on Eerie Indiana

Nov. 29th, 2019 06:18 pm
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Framerated on Parents

Feb. 19th, 2019 02:21 pm
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AfterGlow2046 on My Boyfriend's Back

Oct. 23rd, 2018 08:03 pm
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20 minutes into the future: an interview with Michael Cassutt

Sep. 29th, 2018 10:31 am
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by Dwayne A. Day

Monday, February 12, 2007

Michael Cassutt is a writer who has worked in several genres over the years. He is perhaps best known in science fiction circles as a television writer, penning episodes for shows such as Farscape, Stargate SG-1, and the late, lamented American version of Max Headroom (which was brought to us live, from “20 minutes into the future…”). He has also written several near-future science fiction books, set in the current space program. These include Tango Midnight, Missing Man, and Red Moon, about a murder investigation in the Russian space program during the height of the Moon race.

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TSR: What authors have you found most inspirational? Who do you really admire in your various fields?

Cassutt: See the list of authors above for a start. I would add Greg Bear, Connie Willis, Philip K. Dick, Jack McDevitt, Allen Steele, Wilson Tucker, and Neal Stephenson. I’m a big fan of Robert Crais’ mystery novels.

More mainstream influences… Kurt Vonnegut, Gore Vidal, the often-neglected Sinclair Lewis, and my all-time favorite writer, Kingsley Amis.

In television, I am a big fan of two writers I’ve worked for, Karl Schaefer co-creator of Eerie, Indiana, and Ann Lewis Hamilton. I’ve long admired Steven Bochko and Dick Wolf as producers and writers.

Tom Wolfe has been a big influence on my non-fiction mind, and not just for The Right Stuff. David McCullough. James Oberg.

( Read more... )

TSR: You’ve been involved in a lot of projects over the years. Which ones are you most proud of? Which ones were the most fun?

Cassutt: I’m very proud of the Who’s Who books as well as Deke! Also my historical space novel, Red Moon, and a couple of my short stories.

The most fun? Writing scripts for the Eerie, Indiana, television series. Not only did I get to work with people like John Astin and Ray Walston (heroes of my early TV watching days), but with directors like Joe Dante, Ken Kwapis and Bob Balaban. The tone of Eerie was perfectly suited to my twisted small-town sensibilities.

Max Headroom, of course, was another series that I was born to write, but the hours and schedule were on the brutal side. I enjoyed the results, but the process was a bit of a challenge.

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Lightning Round:

Favorite baseball player?

Kirby Puckett, Minnesota Twins

Favorite book?

Heinlein’s Have Space Suit, Will Travel. Close second, Way Station by Clifford Simak.

What are you reading now?

Making my decadal attempt to read Gravity’s Rainbow. For fun I’m reading some of the new Hard Case Crime mysteries, most recently Fade to Blonde by Max Phillips.

Favorite movie?

I can do top three: The Godfather, October Sky, and Five Easy Pieces.

Favorite TV show on now?

House.

Favorite TV show of all time?

Hill Street Blues.

If you could be any animal in the world, what would it be?

Raven.
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Behind the scenes photo shared by Justin Shenkarow

Jul. 3rd, 2018 06:52 pm
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BloodyDisgusting: Revisiting the Nostalgic, Wonderfully Weird “Eerie, Indiana”!

Jan. 24th, 2018 05:59 pm
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Among all the amazing content that Amazon Prime Video has been curating lately, the one-season wonder of Eerie, Indiana has invoked the most nostalgia. Filling the void of small-town weirdness vacated by Twin Peaks’ cancellation, Eerie, Indiana was an anthology series set in a town filled with strange occurrences investigated by teen Marshall Teller (Hocus Pocus’ Omri Katz) and his sidekick Simon (Justin Shenkarow). NBC boldly placed this family-friendly oddball show smack in the middle of prime-time network television during the 1991-1992 season, and enlisted a slew of well-regarded horror talent. Horror master Joe Dante directed the pilot, among a handful of other episodes, and stayed on as a creative consultant for the remainder of the series. Which meant he had a direct say in casting, and setting the initial tone. He even appears as himself in the ballsy meta finale. Critically adored, Eerie Indiana cleverly towed the line between light-hearted, quirky humor and its underlying darkness, but its unforgiving time slot and expensive production ultimately relegated it to a single season.

Had it aired just a few years later, when supernatural network series were really gaining momentum, Eerie, Indiana may have continued for many seasons. The word “may” being the key word, here, though, as it appeared that series creators Jose Rivera and Karl Shaefer were prepping to retool the series by episode 13 with a new lead in Dash X, the grey-haired mysterious teen without a past played by Jason Marsden channeling his inner Christian Slater. Considering Marshall and Simon were far more likable, I’m not sure this move would’ve worked.

Like most small towns, Eerie was a quaint small town that belied its hidden darkness below the surface. The structure of the entire series unfolded layers of complexity that isn’t as initially obvious in its family-friendly sci-fi/supernatural leanings. Marshall arrives in town from New Jersey, and his closest friend and ally is the much younger Simon. Why would a teen hang out with a boy of roughly nine years old? Episode 3 reveals Simon’s home life is extremely dark and broken, with a father that ignores his son in favor of bringing home multiple women at a time.

The series also had a knack for doling out adult jokes and kid appropriate jokes in equal measures. Marshall’s dad referring to the homeless bum in episode 15 as the town’s sole liberal, followed by Simon’s inquisitive, “What’s a liberal?” induced a chuckle. More than the humor, though, is the show’s ability to retain continuity. Unlike a lot of anthology series, what happens in Eerie is never forgotten and the writers ensure that consequences and findings of episodes reverberate. At least if you pay attention.

With episodes directed by Dante, Bob Balaban (Parents, My Boyfriend’s Back), and Tim Hunter (Twin Peaks, River’s Edge, Hannibal, and notable guest appearances by a young Tobey Maguire, Danielle Harris, and recurring appearances by John Astin (Gomez Addams of The Addams Family) and Harry Goaz playing a much straighter police officer than his Twin Peaks oafish counterpart, Eerie, Indiana was years ahead of its time. Though it fared much better during reruns, garnering a new fan base, the time for this underappreciated series has long lapsed. That doesn’t mean we can’t enjoy its sole season for what it is; clever fun for the burgeoning horror fan with a high rewatch factor. In celebration, I revisited all 19 episodes:

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AVClub: Eerie, Indiana was a few dimensions ahead of its time

Oct. 30th, 2017 08:42 pm
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Patheos.com: Revisiting “Close Encounters,” 40 Years Later

Sep. 15th, 2017 07:29 pm
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(Warning: This review contains spoilers and assumes that the reader has seen “Close Encounters.”)

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I bet Marilyn and Edgar still haven't seen it all the way through though.
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BlumHouse on five directors you didn't know were masters of horror

Mar. 22nd, 2017 07:32 pm
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3. Bob Balaban

For many film fans, Bob Balaban is best recognized as a talented and hilarious character actor who has worked with the best of the best — Steven Spielberg, Ken Russell, John Schlesinger, Wes Anderson, Frank Darabont, and many, many more. But what few know is that Bob Balaban has had a storied relationship with the horror genre that doesn’t nearly get the credit that it deserves.

In terms of his career at large, Balaban made his directorial debut behind the camera on the pilot of a little horror series called TALES FROM THE DARKSIDE, and would later go on to helm small-screen scare fare such as EERIE, INDIANA, AMAZING STORIES, the 2002 revival of THE TWILIGHT ZONE, and DEAD LAST. But where Balaban really made his mark on the genre was on the big screen, with two twisted horror comedies he directed back-to-back: PARENTS and MY BOYFRIEND’S BACK.

While the latter has certainly built a small cult audience over the years — especially considering the film’s early showcasing of Matthew Fox and Philip Seymour Hoffman — PARENTS became a video and cable staple for horror fans throughout the ‘90s, and recently received the Blu-ray treatment earlier this year courtesy of Vestron Video. On top of that, Balaban himself looks fondly upon PARENTS and its legacy; in a recent chat this writer had with Balaban for the final issue of Gorezone, Balaban claimed PARENTS was his most fun directorial effort, and was inspired to tackle the film by David Lynch’s BLUE VELVET, as well as his own childhood experiences.
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Earth Girls Are Cheesy looks back at Bob Balaban;s work, including Eerie, Indiana

Sep. 16th, 2016 10:21 am
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Bob Balaban in ART

Jul. 6th, 2016 05:40 pm
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Bob Balaban's "Parents"

Jul. 3rd, 2016 02:58 am
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