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Director’s Notes: Episode 273 - Horror Recs

Added 2025-09-01 13:00:33 +0000 UTC

As you might know, Jeffrey Cranor and Cecil Baldwin have a podcast together called Random Number Generator Horror Podcast No. 9. In it, they watch a (semi-)randomly selected horror movie, and discuss it, Cecil from the point of view of a horror devotee, Jeffrey as a horror novice. (Although, after almost 300 episodes, Jeffrey is probably no longer really a horror novice, but listen, these are details. Please don’t interrupt.)

My original idea for this episode was to basically write a Night Vale version of that podcast. Bring in Jeffrey as his character Harrison Kip, and have him discuss horror with Cecil on the radio. But then Jeffrey wrote a Harrison Kip part in the episode just before it, and it felt weird to me to have two Harrison Kip parts in a row, so I just restructured it as a solo Cecil show. I dunno, maybe we’ll still do the original version at some point, maybe we won’t. The beauty of Night Vale is the narrative possibilities are limitless.

Despite the change, I still wanted to hear from other Night Vale citizens about their favorite horror movies, and so I did. It was nice to hear from Carlos and Dana again. Hey, maybe we should hear more from them. Like, soon, and in more important plot ways. Let me think on that.

It has been a catastrophically bad time in my personal life for a variety of family and personal medical reasons, and so it’s nice to have the rhythm of Night Vale always waiting for me. No matter what, a Night Vale episode comes out 20 times a year. The deadlines keep coming. I still have to remember to write these director’s notes.

A routine can be comforting. Also comforting: a really good horror movie.

-Joseph Fink

Listen here.

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