A haunted apartment might sound terrifying, but what if the rent is too good to pass up? Filmmaker Allan Piper turned that idea into Evil Sublet, a horror comedy about a couple willing to live with ghosts for an affordable home. His next film, Highway Gothic, explores another familiar nightmare: being trapped in traffic with no way out. Both stories draw on the ways people feel stuck in everyday life, particularly when housing and transportation leave them with few good choices. Piper reflects on why horror is such a natural fit for these frustrations and what our fears reveal about the places we've built.
Hello and welcome to Bottom-Up Shorts. I'm Norm with Strong Towns, and I love connecting with the broadest range of people in the Strong Towns movement, and people that are just interested in cities, interested in our communities. And today, I'm really excited to do something maybe a little bit different because we have Halloween right around the corner, and so we're going to take a slightly different and I hope spookier look at our built environment. And our guest today is perfect for this.
Allan Piper is an accomplished filmmaker and media strategist who is the mind behind the movie Evil Sublet, a horror comedy about the terrifying realities of the New York housing market, but is also currently gearing up for his next feature movie, Highway Gothic, which will be a horror slasher that mixes live action and animation inside a silver car. And I just think this going to be interesting. It is far beyond sort of my regular watching habits, and so I'm super excited to have Alan on the podcast. Welcome to Bottom-Up Shorts today. So you are seemingly in a pattern of making movies about people that are stuck.
So in the first one, Evil Sublet, they're stuck in a bad rental situation where the rent is cheap, but the question is, especially if you watch the trailer, is this worth it? And I'm sure if anyone of you, as you're listening, if you're in a rental situation as I am, I've definitely been in many instances where I'm like, is this still worth it? Those are important questions that we ask in the context of our housing market. And then a new movie coming out about being stuck in traffic, where that access might have felt cheap. Hey, we had an easy road on here, but now we're stuck and we're in this situation.
Just share a little bit more about the way in which these settings have come to you, and you've used these opportunities to tell a story.
Thank you, Norm. I'm so happy to be here. Well, as you said, Evil Sublet, which folks can see on Amazon, Tubi, Bloodstream, and a bunch of other places, is about a couple in New York who knowingly move into a haunted apartment because the rent is cheap. And when I, with my story partner Chris Pearson, first came up with this idea about a decade ago, it seemed very uniquely New York that people would be willing to subject themselves to potentially life-threatening situations just for affordable rent. But it's become much more of a nationwide story.
My wife is from Yuma, Arizona, and that is traditionally not a place that everybody in the world is trying to move to, but even there, rents are becoming unaffordable for a lot of people. So I think many people can relate to the idea of potentially being willing to take on ghostly roommates if it will help make the rent a little bit easier to pay, and then with Highway Gothic, yes, it is. We are starting filming Highway Gothic in about two weeks, and that is about a family that is trapped in a car.
It's a holiday road trip gone utterly wrong when they are trapped in a car on a highway stalked by a killer, and the car itself might even be haunted, and that is that is a fantastical idea. But I think a lot of people, anyone who drives a car, can relate to getting stuck in traffic. That actually grew out of an experience of being stuck in an obscenely backed-up traffic jam for a long period of time, and realizing how disturbing it is to actually have no real way out of the situation.
And so, horror movies are about the things that are scary and difficult for people, and I think few things are scarier than being trapped with no way out, and I think that in our modern economy, people are feeling trapped with no way out in more ways than they ever used to. Whether they are physically trapped in a in a traffic jam, trapped in a bad lease, as you pointed out, trapped in a subscription they can't cancel. or trapped in a job that they don't like, but they can't leave because they can't risk losing their health care.
There are so many ways in which we have, in the land of the free, we have failed to make our citizens as free as we should be, and so a lot of Americans feel unfree.
But it so often seems like these instances where belatedly we realize that we're really stuck in horror movies and the horror sort of genre seems to lean into this that like we end up making bad bargains. Sometimes those are bad bargains with ourselves. Sometimes we sort of accept a bad bargain. And I think in the context of the work that I do with Strong Towns, a lot of the time I'm just focused on making things a little bad. But making things a little bad in the horror genre sort of says is kind of this like acquiescence to things not being as they should be.
I feel like that also describes a lot of how we try to cope with suburban and urban living, and each of the challenges that emerge from it, and sort of the gloss is there that all is well. And yet, if you peel back that layer, you begin to realize there, there's you've sort of torqued it and amped it up by saying there's real horror there.
But that feels like a pretty sort of thin line between people's experience, just being like, ah, it's not as it could be, and what you're able to do is sort of lean into that and be like, what if it was even worse? how does that sort of land for you in the work that you do, not only to create great films but also to reflect on it as an individual, as a resident, as somebody that's passionate about your place?
I think horror always does grow out of these real life situations, and while both of these movies are intended to be entertaining thrill rides and with scares and jokes and blood and nudity and all sorts of all sorts of cheap fun pleasures. There, there is that undercurrent of it is about it is about a very real situation that we all find ourselves in, and I think that there's there's an annoying online discourse about oh horror shouldn't be political. Well, it always has been. All of the best, interesting horror is in some way connected to the things that actually scare people in their real lives.
And when our real lives are scary, it's cathartic to have a fictional thing to experience some fear about, but it's always some level of similarity to what is really happening that makes both the catharsis work and the thrilling fun of the horror work.
And I think the reality also lies in the fact that many, the response of some people to a horror scene is why? Why did they ever open that closet, or why ever open that door? But in other instances, I love the reality here of like a lease that you just step stepped into and try to persist in, and then just realize like this not what we signed up for, and yet we're stuck. That actually feels so realistic in a lot of instances, and I just the similar description of the new movie of just you need to get away.
You need to get away from whatever the harm is, only to realize that there's no harm that can be sort of escaped because it's present. It's it's with you, and my mind just goes to like the challenges that we have, no matter where we're living right now, unless we have a significant amount of means and just the ability to sort of varnish over the real barriers that we face trying to get access to healthcare, trying to get access to good clean parks, places that we can enjoy ourselves. Third spaces that we can participate in. I feel all of those things quite intensely.
And maybe let's pivot from like your craft and your art into just generally the things that you're doing as a filmmaker, but as a strategist. Do you want to share just a little bit more about like your background, and also bring up our Strong Towns connection through our new executive director, John Reuter.
Well, so yes, the other side, the other side of my life. On one side of my life as a filmmaker, I'm I'm making horror films as that are escapist, trying to escape from this horrific moment that I think it feels horrific to a lot of people. This moment in history that we're living through. So I make escapist horror films with an undercurrent of social commentary, and the other side of my life is that I do actual overt commentary. I'm a commentator for Courier Newsroom, which is which covers the news of the day. I've been particularly focused on this year on the midterm races, and I have a background in working with other news organizations.
With I was the supervising politics producer for NowThis during the period when I think NowThis had its greatest influence, which was in during the 2018 midterms and the 2020 election, and I have worked on some political campaigns on the video team strategy. And so When I am not telling metaphorical, subtextual social commentary horror stories. I am very much focused on the real life, overt commentary, often real life horrors that we're all facing. So when I'm not making a film about a haunted apartment, I might very well be making videos about America's affordable housing crisis.
And when I'm not making a horror film about a haunted highway, I might very well be making online videos about the desperate need to invest in infrastructure, and about the fact that actually, that where the affordable housing crisis and the infrastructure investment, the intersection there is that people are pushed to live further and further away from where they work because where they work is unaffordable. So they get this long commute. Failure to invest in infrastructure means that, unlike other countries, we don't have good high-speed rail or and cheap rail service to get there. Depending on where you live, actually in New York, we're very lucky to have such a wonderful subway system.
Although there are there are serious problems there, particularly when it gets to accessibility. But in terms of driving, people get pushed further and further away from where they live. They have a longer commute. The infrastructure investments haven't been made, so the congestion and the road conditions are worse, and they lose more and more of their lives in the process of trying to get to and from work. You've got this period of time for which they're paid, and then this much larger period of time, which has been turned into a work time. It's certainly not time that they can use personally for themselves, but it is unpaid work time. Yeah,
and in one case, there's the paranormal influence on all of the things that are going on around in a in a movie, in a book, in horror as a genre. But in normal circumstances, we actually have these sort of darker forces as well. And I think Strong Towns has been in a place to try to say, here are the limits of the suburban pattern of development, it results in significant scarcity that is long realized, and so it takes a while for that realization to kick in.
And that gnawing sense, I think, is a core part of our Strong Towns mission: is to help more people articulate that gnawing sense that we've not done the things that are necessary to build lasting prosperity, and as a result, things like making our subway systems more accessible just can't be done because there's not enough money in the banana stand for that. There's the creation of the challenges of like always needing to just cope, and we probably are always going to be in a coping sort of method trying to figure out how do we just do the small things at least, and I think that's where Strong Towns can be such a important part of that conversation to shed light.
Here is a small thing we can do right now: improve a sidewalk, improve a bench for someone to sit at, and if we can chip away at those things, it will result in more of what we need to see instead of being part of the further decline of our places, and that to me gives me a ton of hope. But I'd love to hear maybe as to lean into your skills in video.
What is a core piece of advice that you would give to people that want to use media, especially on the shorts and some of the areas in which it's just trying to break through people's sort of attention span, or I guess claim some of their attention in order to share a message, whether serious or using comedy or other genres to sort of break through that bubble and connect with people.
Well, I think that it's always about the humanness of the story, and I think that in one of the problems, particularly in the progressive sphere of media, is that I think, and I'm coming with my own perspective here, but I think that objectively, I believe that the progressive ideas are better, and because they are better, I think too many progressives think that you can rely just on the ideas themselves. That the strength of the argument, the strength of the facts and the data, that will be sufficient. If I put up the data and I put up all this stuff, then everyone will arrive at the right conclusion.
And I think that conservative media actually had a little bit of an of an advantage from their disadvantage. I think most of them know they can't win the on the ideas. They know. They know that if they say, "Hey, the idea is you should keep less of your paycheck so that more of it can go to a few, just a handful of billionaires," if they go with that idea, people aren't going to go for that. So they have never been distracted by the idea.
They've always pivoted to the emotion about hey oh some scary person from some other place is coming to take your job or go into your daughter's bathroom or just come up with well coming from a horror perspective come up with horror scenarios to scare people while that I think is deplorable, progressives should never abandon the facts and the data. They should stand with the facts and the data, but they can't rely on them solely. They have to say, "Hey, if we want to communicate this to people, we need to tell human stories." So instead of a story about marginal tax rates.
Let's tell a story about how this person who's working hard and doing the right things and isn't that isn't this person an admirable person that everybody can relate to? Here's how this person is getting personally screwed by this policy and could benefit from this policy.
In that articulation of these are the things that we are threatened by, and these are the longer term consequences if we leave this threat unignored. Sometimes gives you that recognition, like oh, what I experience and what I feel right now is this deep sense of like worry. Well, those worries can sometimes be misdirected, and if we can bring that into alignment, I think that can mean a lot. You know, this can be such a longer discussion. I really appreciate it, but I always love to ask as I close: What is it that gives you hope as you look at the work that you do, and as you seek to be involved in your community,
I think what gives me hope is that people don't seem to give up, and I tend to think that the younger people have the brighter ideas than everybody else, and that gives me hope for the future. Just a moment in my filmmaking life that I've been holding on to for about the last decade to further give me hope for the future.
In 20 in 2010 and 2011, I was making a film called a documentary film called Married and Counting, which is about a couple who, at a moment when same-sex marriage was highly controversial in America, they decided that since they could not get married legally in the state where they lived, they were going to go to every single state where it was legal and get married in those states as a statement of love to each other, and as a political statement, and so I remember the last place they were planning to get married was in Washington D.C. because D.C. had same-sex marriage at the time, and so they were they had just gotten married on the steps of the Supreme Court, and like many couples do, they went around and took some wedding photographs at some monuments, and they were at the Lincoln Memorial posing for a wedding photograph, and they shared a kiss.
And just as they kissed, this class of really young students passed by on a field trip, and I thought, I thought, oh no, this going to be a bad situation because I thought back to my own experience as an elementary school student, and I thought, wow, if my class had come across two men kissing in public, like it's going to be, they're going to start making noises, and these kid these kids just walked by. They saw it. It didn't affect them. They didn't care. They moved along. They said, "Look, there's Abraham Lincoln up in the." You know, they were impressed by the things they were supposed to be impressed by.
And I thought, "Wow, this issue that is at the moment in 2011 really tearing up the nation in a lot of ways is not tearing up these kids at all. And when these kids grow up, this issue here isn't going to be an issue that we're wrestling with. And so I like to think that if we all do our best now, so many of the most terrible issues that we're wrestling with are not going to be issues that the little kids today are going to be wrestling with when they're grown up.
Yeah, and having to provide assurances that yes, you will have ample parking wherever you go, or having many of those other layers that we can look forward to, I think is really important. So with that. Would love to hear just what's a good way for people to be able to keep track of your new movie project, and just mention one more time where they can find the Sublet movie.
You can watch Evil Sublet for free on Tubi, Bloodstream, Plex. You can watch it ad free on Amazon and Fandango, and anyone who wants to follow what's happening with Evil Sublet or Highway Gothic can follow me on Instagram A Piper 13, and there should be more information in the days ahead about what is happening with this new movie.
Well, I appreciate you coming and sharing about it, and yeah, I know we've woven together some very interesting elements of using our and understanding our places as part of characters within our lives. They help shape the stories that we tell, and I really appreciate you coming on the podcast today, Alan. Thanks for joining me.
Thank you very much.
Yeah, it's great to have you. And as you take note of your community, perhaps there are things that truly do scare you, as well as the realization that in that scariness, there are elements that we can always be working towards. We can actually begin to improve our circumstances. Sometimes the horror movie doesn't let you, but in real life, we certainly can. And I know that as we do that work together, we can make a profound difference. So keep doing what you can to build Strong Towns. Take care and take care of your places. This episode was produced by Strong Towns, a nonprofit movement for building financially resilient communities.
If what you heard today matters to you, deepen your connection by becoming a Strong Towns member at strongtowns.org/membership.