On this episode we talk to “Prophet of Horror” Ron Williams about how his African and Indigenous heritage ties into his horror storytelling and his ongoing short film trilogy. Support the Kickstarter for Him the Beast.

Here’s the transcript:

David Dylan Thomas: Hey, everybody. Welcome to the White Meat podcast. I’m your host, David Dylan Thomas, writer and director of White Meat, a movie with the following premise: Underneath Washington Square Park in Philadelphia are buried the bodies of hundreds of enslaved people. This is true. What if one night they all come back from the dead as zombies, but they only eat white people?

We’ve got our short film, White Meat Appetizer. We just got back from Horror Fest Film Fest in Wilmington, Delaware. That was a ton of fun. Met a lot of cool people. And we have many, many, many screenings in October. I remember last year we really wanted to premiere the film on Halloween.

That didn’t quite work out, but as almost revenge for that, I guess we’re gonna be screening maybe eight times in October. And I think two or three times over the Halloween weekend. So that’s gonna be a lot of fun. So I’ll have all the dates up on whitemeatmovie.com, where you can check out all the latest.

But I can tell you we’re gonna be in Nashville; Gary, Indiana; Provo, Utah. That one’s just for the screenplay, but that’s gonna be a lot of fun. We’ll be in Orlando, Florida. We’re gonna be in Philadelphia. That’s actually in November, but it’s gonna be a really cool screening. Actually, we’ll be in a lot of places in Media and New- Newtown Square in Pennsylvania as well.

So we’re gonna be all over the place, is what I’m saying, and so it’s really a lot of fun. I’m gonna go to as many of those in person as I can. But yeah check out our website and see if you can make it to one of those yourself.

This episode, we are talking to Ron Williams, who I met at the Delco Horror Haven Film Festival.  Saw his movie, it was really cool, and then we talked for three hours afterward. We just vibed really well. A lot about his Afro-Indigenous heritage, how that informs his filmmaking a lot of great stuff. So without further ado, here is our interview with Ron Williams

[musical interlude]

David Dylan Thomas: And welcome to the White Meat Podcast. I’m your host, David Dylan Thomas, and today we have a very special guest. His name is Ron Williams. Ron, tell the good folks here what it is you get up to.

Ron Williams: What it is I get up to?

David Dylan Thomas: Yeah. How do you spend your time?

Ron Williams: Oh I write, I hike, and I make movies. I’m on my first film.

I watch horror movies, listen to a lot of rock and roll. Yeah that’s my thing. That’s what I do.

David Dylan Thomas: So when we met at the Delco Horror Haven Film Festival, which I just happened to be wearing a T-shirt for. I did not plan this. It was just at the top of the pile. But so I had “White Meat Appetizer” there, and tell me about the film that you had there.

Ron Williams: First of all, actually, I wanna congratulate you on “White Meat Appetizer.” You are racking up some wins here-

David Dylan Thomas: Thank you

Ron Williams: At the film festival. How’s it feel?

David Dylan Thomas: It feels good. It’s exhausting because I’m hopping from Los Angeles to New York to Philly, and just travel is exhausting by its very nature.

So that’s a little bit to keep up with, but the wins are great. It’s obviously wonderful to be recognized, and it’s also, great to see what people are recognizing about the film. Chain New York City gave us the experimental nod, I think because we’re vertical, and that’s super rare in festivals these days.

We got Best Horror Short and Best Horror Writing from the filmmakers at Film Invasion LA, and that’s an award that is judged by the previous entrants the previous people who got into, who screened at Film Invasion LA. So to be recognized by filmmakers, game recognizes game kind of kudos, which is always fun.

So yeah, it’s been a lot of fun.

Ron Williams: And that’s great getting that recognition from your peers. I mean-

David Dylan Thomas: Yeah. Yeah.

Ron Williams: It’s, of course, it’s wonderful to get it from the audience, but, when your peers give you the nod and it’s yeah, that’s an extra special feeling. So when I met you we came up to Delaware to the Delco Horror Haven Film Festival.

We presented “Him the Beast,” the first part, which was the eight-minute film. And it appeared that folks really liked the film. “Him the Beast” is in three parts, actually. We’re in the process of shooting part two. And it’s, part one is about a serial killer who attacks a couple and then targets a woman who turns out to be way more than he bargained for.

Basically someone of a supernatural nature.

David Dylan Thomas: Yeah.

Ron Williams: And I always liked– One of the things I love about horror are the twists that you get at the end or, even in the middle. I wanna make sure I had that kind of twist. We don’t wanna engage in the usual tropes.

David Dylan Thomas: Yeah.

Ron Williams: But, but in, in the nature of this particular film being the beast and the human and the duality and the way in which we behave, the tables will be turned on us. So that’s what happens in the first, in part one.

David Dylan Thomas: Yeah. And I really enjoyed part one. I’m looking forward to the next couple of parts.

Without getting too spoilery, and you can tell me if this is getting too spoilery, but it seems like one of the things you’re trafficking in, one of the things you’re exploring is more African myths and and more spiritual kind of I don’t know, practice. I’m trying to talk around it without talking around it ’cause I do wanna get into bringing some of those types of energies.\, spiritualities into modern horror, which is usually pulling on very European folklore.

Ron Williams: As we know humankind came out of Africa and spread. But there may be some African myths interlaced in there, but what I’m driving at is that and without spoiling it, the conjurer, she’s much older than people think.

That is why there are no sym- she wears no symbols.

So we’re going in the context of the, the earth, the, the humankind is… let me rewind that for a second.

David Dylan Thomas: Sure.

Ron Williams: Cause what I’m arriving at is the universal nature. Now, within the African context, we’ve always delved into the cosmic.

We were the first to get into the cosmology.

We were first to look at the stars and things like that, and to understand that we are infinite, that the universe is infinite, that all that exists is infinite. We are made of the same stuff. That Carl Sagan, “We’re made of billions and billions of star stuff,” that kind of thing.

And then Dr. Neil deGrasse Tyson took up that mantle. But so within that, yes, our people are ancient, humankind is ancient coming out of Africa, but the point is that all that we symbolize, all of that is manmade. The only truth is in nature. Everything else is a human construct.

So even African people were in tune with the universe, and you had such symbols as the ankh, and you had the cowrie shells, you had the Gye Nyame coming out of the Akan people in Ghana. Still, those were ways in which we can make meaning of our existence.

But existence is way much older. As a matter of fact, it cannot even be measured.

And that’s one of the points I’m driving at, and that’s what you will see in part three.

David Dylan Thomas: Excellent.

Ron Williams: Yeah.

David Dylan Thomas: As a horror– Well, let me ask you this. I know this is your first, is this your first horror film?

Ron Williams: First horror film.

David Dylan Thomas: Is it your first film overall or just your first horror film?

Ron Williams: Yeah, actually it’s my first film overall.

I acted in a couple of things, but the actual film that I actually made.

And I wanna shout out to my film partner and friend, David Sebastiao. This film wouldn’t be what it is without him, his insight his cinematic acumen. He really crafted the film well, so shout out to him.

But yes, this is my first film that I wrote, co-directed, acted in, starred in. Yeah. And I’ve always wanted to do film, but I was delving into theater and spoken word and all these other performing arts, and then one day I said, “You know what? Let me do a film. Let me do what I always loved to do.”

So yeah, this is my first effort.

David Dylan Thomas: Congratulations and astounding first effort in particular. I think what I’m trying to get at is have you created horror before and are these kinds of concerns things you’ve tried to address in horror before? Because I think the idea of the ancient and tying that to Africanness, I think there’s a lot of there there, especially if you try to play with horror.

Ron Williams: I, in 2023, I started a YouTube channel and I started recording short stories.

And I’ve– I can’t remember how many I’ve done, but it did deal with the supernatural and the sci- philosophical nature of things. Always wanna get to what’s the root, what’s m- the more profound, not just the surface level, but what goes deep into who we are.

As I always as I’ve been saying, horror portrays, horror uses the natural and supernatural elements to portray the chaos of the human condition.

And so that’s where I start from. And of course, culturally speaking, being of African and Native American descent, that’s what I’m, that’s what I’m gonna come from.

David Dylan Thomas: Yeah.

Ron Williams: And so my stories are going to actually be rooted in me. So I feature in my short stories and my poetry and things like that. And so when this film, when I started working on the film, it was the same way. I do believe in the collective. I do believe in the old African proverb of “I am we.”

So that in itself feeds into our understanding of who we are in the context of the universe. So yeah I started three years ago with that, and that’s how it manifested into this film. But I’ve always as a matter of fact I was that Afro-punk kid. I’m the prophet of horror, the OG Afro indi- the OG Black Indigenous Afro-punk horror nerd.

That’s who I am.

David Dylan Thomas: I remember, and when you said that, I’m like  “Oh, I gotta talk to this guy.”

We gotta unpack every single one of those.

Ron Williams: Oh, absolutely. So I’m an OG, here’s the gray whiskers and everything. Being Black and Indigenous, being Black and Native American Blackfoot, Cherokee, and Seneca.

And so that’s where I’m rooted from. And Afro-punk, I was that Black kid in the mosh pit back in the ’80s, with…

I had Doc Marten shoes. I didn’t have Doc Marten boots, but I was in the pit. And my, my only regret during that time, ’cause I grew up in DC, was that I never got to see Bad Brains and Black Flag live. But Bad Brains, to me, was the baddest hardcore punk band of all time.

But yeah, I was, and even when the self, the pit, that’s like a tribal kind of thing in itself because people are getting, releasing their angst. And particularly it’s mostly men, though there are women that are in the pit, and, it’s about bonding and getting that, all that stuff that society tries to impede upon you, getting that off of you.

David Dylan Thomas: Yeah.

Ron Williams: And and being a horror nerd, I was a, I was a nerd of horror since I was a kid and watching Creature Feature on Saturdays and watching the old vampire movies, the Hammer films with Christopher Lee, and then even the older ones with the Wolf Man, the Creature from the Black Lagoon, and, it would scare me to death.

And then I went to see Alien in the movie theater, and oh my God, I had nightmares, had to have the lights on.

David Dylan Thomas: How old were you?

Ron Williams: But I kept going.

David Dylan Thomas: How old were you when you saw Alien in the theater?

Ron Williams: Oh my God, I was 11 years old.

David Dylan Thomas: Oh, man.

Ron Williams: And I’m like-

David Dylan Thomas: Are you okay, dude?

Ron Williams: First of all, I don’t even know how I got into the theater.

And maybe I’m in perpetual recovery, but oh, man, and then I went to see The Howling, the same thing happened. I walked out of the theater and I couldn’t sleep at night, but it’s like I just kept going back to horror. It was, like, just my thing. And then when I was a, when I was a teenager, I was like 15 or 16, I would actually play hooky, not to go to the arcade, but I would ride my bike to the video store, rent about five horror movies, and then go…

Oh I have to back up for a second because I actually disguised my father’s voice. I put a towel over the phone, and I would call the school and “Ron is not feeling well today. He’s gonna be staying in.” And then I would get on my bike, ’cause, I had to hide behind the living room couch.

So my parents left, then I can jet up to the video store and go rent about five movies, come right back, watch them all. And eat my grilled cheese sandwiches with, on raisin bread. I know it sounds disgusting, but I loved it. I loved it. And then after that, and fortunately I could re- you know, you had to rewind fast enough to be able to watch all of them.

And then I’d jet back up to the video store, drop them off, and come back before my parents got home.

David Dylan Thomas: Wow. So basically-

Ron Williams: And I did that for a solid year.

David Dylan Thomas: So basically your Ferris Bueller’s Day Off was watching horror movies?

Ron Williams: Yes. Yes. Absolutely. Absolutely. And all the hits.

“Texas Chainsaw Massacre,” “Halloween,” “My Bloody Valentine,” “Happy Birthday to Me,” “Prom Night,” all those classics. I watched all of them.

David Dylan Thomas: Wait, so what did the video store clerk do? Like middle of a school day, this 11-year-old rolls up and is like, “Yo, give me ‘Texas Chainsaw Massacre.'”

Ron Williams: So I was like, so I was like 15 at the time.

David Dylan Thomas: Oh, okay.

Ron Williams: And like I would go when the video store opened, so we’re talking like 9:00. I was there. And boom, boom, boom, boom. And get ’em, go back home, and then when I’d come back to return them it was like 5:00.

David Dylan Thomas: Okay.

Ron Williams: Like between 4:00 and 5:00, somewhere around there. Yeah.

David Dylan Thomas: That’s, that is amazing.

So what is it you think that kept bringing you back to horror?

Ron Williams: I think it’s the mystery of it. The fear of the unknown, the fear of death, and the exploration of death. It’s the supernatural. For example, with the vampires, Count Dracula, that’s one of the oldest love stories.

The idea of someone transcending death to find his lost love.

And that always, that fascinated me. And I was, of course I love all the gothic, the gothic scenery and the gothic period. I was fascinated with that. But yeah the supernatural, the fear, the magic, the fantasy that I can escape into other worlds.

I think that was it. And nothing was never tidy and neat at the end.

That everybody walked away with some sort of scars, some sort of lesson, some sort of reflection, and it, to me, it is more reflective of life than the other genres.

David Dylan Thomas: Say more about that.

Ron Williams: So with everything, there are consequences.

What Hollywood does is they say, “Okay it’s gonna be messy for three-quarters of the film, but we gotta make the last quarter plausible enough for the audience to be suspended in disbelief so that they can walk home happy that something got resolved, the hero wins at the end, he gets his love, and so it’s happily ever after,” or, the, the riding off into the sunset, things like that.

So it’s never it’s it’ll never get to the Shakespearean. Like I always laugh, like if they could rewrite the story of Jesus, they would, where like he gets off the cross at the end. “Oh, I’m okay now,” so with horror it feeds into the idea that you’re not going to get away with it.

You do something, there’s going to be consequences. You open the box, you’re gonna have to deal with happens, what happens to the box.

David Dylan Thomas: Yeah.

Ron Williams: You kill, like what was that in “Prom Night”? They kill the girl. There’s gonna be consequences.

David Dylan Thomas: Yeah.

Ron Williams: You are not gonna walk away unscathed.

Either you’re gonna die, your friends are gonna die, or if you survive, then, you’re gonna be wrecked once you do something, and this is what I always look at, once you do something, there is no… You have no control over the consequences.

So what happens in Hollywood is, “Oh, we- we’re showing that we have some sort of control. Even though we screwed up tremendously, we’re gonna be okay.” That’s not how it is in horror, and that’s what happens in “Him the Beast” as well.

Particularly in part two, no matter how big or small. I love the line in “Gangster Squad,” “There are two things that you cannot take back: bullets out of a gun and words out of your mouth.”

David Dylan Thomas: I love that you found redeeming pieces out of “Gangster Squad.” That’s-

Ron Williams: Yeah …

David Dylan Thomas: That’s impressive.

Ron Williams: Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah …

David Dylan Thomas: No shade to Sean Penn, he’s great in that.

Ron Williams: Exactly. Exactly. He played his role …

David Dylan Thomas: oh my God. I think what you said is very true, ’cause I think about, I think to your point, with the exception of drama, which depending on if it’s a tearjerker or not, consequences are allowed to play out.

But even then it’s the consequences are the most horrific part of that drama.

Ron Williams: Yeah.

David Dylan Thomas: And I think that a lot of horror derives its horror from the consequence. Freddy is going around ’cause y’all burned a dude back then. And the, the poltergeist house is fucked up ’cause you just moved the headstones.

You didn’t move the bodies, right? There’s like all these things that are like, somebody fucked… And there’s inevitably a point in a lot of horror stories where you hear the story, and the story is usually the story of, “Oh yeah, this is how a bunch of people fucked up, and what’s happening now is payment for it,” right?

“The Fog” is all about that, right?

Ron Williams: Oh, heck yeah …

David Dylan Thomas: it literally starts with a story and then you find out- … that story is actually why everyone’s getting fucked.

Ron Williams: “I Spit On Your Grave.”

David Dylan Thomas: Yeah. Yeah. And all, all revenge horror, right? Yes. That is a solid trope. And I think you’re right. I think it, it concerns itself with consequences more than action, romantic comedy, what have you.

Ron Williams: And I and we can add to that as well, ’cause it allows you, if you’ve ever been victimized, if you ever dealt with those things, it allows you to say, “Oh yes, get ’em.”

Yeah. You feel some sort of relief, some sort of vindication

David Dylan Thomas: Yeah

Ron Williams: Whether you’ve been bullied, whether things have happened to you, and you look at this feeling like, “Yeah, that was me. Yeah, get ’em,”

David Dylan Thomas: Go back to your example of the mosh pit, right? It becomes this release.

Even like the slasher genre, which usually there’s like a very light sprinkling of, oh yeah, Camp Crystal Lake, the counselors were off having sex while the boy drowned. And we’re gonna somehow run on that for eight fucking movies. After a certain point, it’s more about like you’re rooting for Jason.

You want him to kill these annoying teenagers. And it’s like they give you just enough character to be like, all right, clearly these kids are annoying, and in the world of a slasher, that is more than enough justification for you to die.

Ron Williams: Oh, absolutely.

David Dylan Thomas: And you get that you get that release, right?

Ron Williams: Yeah. Die, Kevin Bacon.

David Dylan Thomas: I gotta tell you, Kevin Bacon’s death in “Friday the 13th” is probably one of the gnarliest I’ve ever seen because I can never get the image out of my head, not of the arrow going through his neck, but right before it comes through his neck, where it’s just this big piece of arrow-shaped flesh coming out of his neck.

That’s the part that is fucked up. And I will never get out of my brain.

Ron Williams: Yes. I will applaud the special effects artists that did that,

And it kind of reminds you, ’cause when you slow it down, it does elongate the torture. And it makes you cringe more.

So remember, and I was watching the documentary, and I forgot about this, about “Zombi.” Lucio Fulci, and how the woman was being brought to the pencil. Just stabbing, and it’s just like excruci- it seems like taking forever, but it’s only like a few seconds.

David Dylan Thomas: Yeah. I-

Ron Williams: You know what I mean?

David Dylan Thomas: Eye horror is a thing, it’s a thing for everybody. It’s really a thing for me, and I’m like, Fulci loves him some eyeballs.

I mean a person could be like, I don’t know, stabbed or in a car crash or something that has nothing to do with the eye, he’s gonna find a way to pierce your eye. I don’t care. Like, you could be like poisoned and you’re, he’s gonna find a way to pierce your eye.

Ron Williams: ‘Cause the, that particular poison enables the eyes to pop out.

David Dylan Thomas: Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Like he’s got, that’s his thing. That’s his thing. And folks, like Google at your discretion Fulci or Kevin Bacon in “Friday the 13th.” Just know they are probably things you won’t get out of your brain if you do see them.

I wanna talk a little bit about, and to the degree that you’re comfortable, I First of all, I don’t th- I don’t think the identity, for lack of a better word, of Native American and Black gets talked about enough.

Cause it goes way back and there’s way more of us, or not us of you, but- … of people of with that heritage than people really know going all the way back to slavery times.

Ron Williams: Yeah. Yeah.

David Dylan Thomas: So it’s an identity we don’t think about, and I really think we should.

But putting that aside for a moment, I am curious if and how those identities inform your horror sensibilities.

Ron Williams: Wow. That’s a good question. You know what one thing, because we are so…bipolar’s not the word for it, but we’re all about black and white in this country.

David Dylan Thomas: Yes.

Ron Williams: Even I forget at times that I’m biracial.

That’s how badly the Native Americans have been destroyed, decimated in this country. From the Na- the Indian Removal Act, and also the Mexican-American War, ’cause remember, they were all Indian people that owned California, New Mexico, Arizona, Texas, all of that, and only became Mexican because of the conquistadors.

So the natives were removed and put in reservations, and the only way to thrive is to leave the reservation, but then you lose your identity. The Christian missionaries would come and then they would, basically colonize native religious spiritual practices out of them.

You’re no longer praying to the Great Spirit, you’re praying to the Abrahamic God.

And you’re praying to Jesus. As a matter of fact, the Native Americans were called heathens by the Christian missionaries. And I’m like, yep, that’s a cultural thing. That has nothing to do with spirituality.

So as you’re taking our land, you’re calling us heathens and savages and all kinds of things. Then you put us in these reservations, and you basically want to erase us completely. Fortunately, there are a number of folks here in, in America that keep the Native American conversation going. But yet and still, and I think we had this conversation, ’cause when we– you talk about reparations, yes, what does that look like for Black people?

What does that look like for Native Americans?

David Dylan Thomas: Yup.

Ron Williams: You gonna give Native Americans their land back? I don’t think so at this point. But if you’re gonna have that conversation, then you need to have the conversation about Native people.

There is not just a history of erasure from without the external, but also the internal. To give you an example, my mother’s mother was full-blooded Blackfoot.

But she could pass for white.

My mother had those Indian features, the wavy hair, the widow’s peak, the high cheekbones, the whole nine, and her skin was such that they could, she could not. Her mother abandoned her, adopted her niece as her daughter, and lived as a white woman.

These are the kind of stories that have happened to Native people, these kind of atrocities that they’ve done to each other.

David Dylan Thomas: Yeah.

Ron Williams: So in a way, I’m telling these stories to keep my identity out there because if nobody, if I don’t tell my story, nobody else will.

You don’t see someone like me in front of the camera.

First of all, it’s rare to see a Black man with locks-

David Dylan Thomas: Yeah …

Ron Williams: On screen. But to see a Black Native American, and I’m not the smallest dude in the world either, with long locks, you know what I mean?

David Dylan Thomas: Yeah.

Ron Williams: And that’s the way it’s been my entire artistic career. I would not be included in certain roles.

David Dylan Thomas: Yeah.

Ron Williams: So then I would make my own and do my own plays. So I started with If the World Were Like Fat Albert and the Cosby Kids, and the whole thing about that was it would become an ev- everyday reality where people would come together in communities, they would learn lessons, and everything would be happily ever after in communities.

And then I went to Dreadlocks, Rock ‘n’ Roll, and Human Rights was about a Black middle class kid who discovered rock and roll and social justice. What I should have done with that piece is also talk about the Native American part of me. Even though I did talk, feature that story about my mother, what happened to my mother in there.

And even the rhythm is very profound and powerful, the African drum and the Native drum, and a lot of that gets lost.The only thing you’ll see now relating to Native people is the Wendigo.

So you have that supernatural monster and that is about it. Thank goodness you had “Prey” that featured Native people.

But how often do you see-

David Dylan Thomas: Yeah …

Ron Williams: Those kinds of films? And I’m glad we’re having this conversation because I wanna make sure when everything culminates in part three, that I have that in there.

David Dylan Thomas: Yeah.

Ron Williams: You know what I mean? Because, yes, African, the African drum is the root.

Because the African nation is the root of all of humankind. However, within my context that Native part is necessary and special, so I wanna make sure I have that in there. And frankly, there are those who are Native American who don’t claim themselves that way because they want to function and survive in this country.

David Dylan Thomas: Sure. I it’s interesting, like when you talk about this, ’cause I’m very much looking to part three now ’cause I do I want to, I too want to tell stories that are more about global struggle as much as I want to tell stories about Black people and Black horror. I want to tell them in a way where I’m incorporating, yeah, but this is how that is playing out for everybody.

And especially when I look at I’ve seen a handful of Native American horror films, I’ve seen a handful of African horror films, and they feel very similar to me, especially in terms of a plot where you are dealing with some spiritual force that cannot be killed. This isn’t blowing up the shark at the end of “Jaws.”

You can’t blow it up. It’s just like you need to…you need to ba- basically you need to learn how to live with it. Like- … whether you’re appeasing it, whether you’re like limiting the damage, whether you’re coming to, whether you’re putting back the thing you shouldn’t have tooken, right?

But there’s no version of, “Oh if, as long as I like, set this trap or say this spell, it’ll go away.” It’s like, “Nah.” And, in other words, it’s not like the more European domination myths of, “Oh, okay, Dracula’s here. We gotta kill Dracula,” “Wolf Man’s here. We gotta kill the Wolf Man.” It’s like, “No, this spirit is here, and you’re gonna have to fucking deal with it ’cause it can kill you two times before you hit the floor.

Ron Williams: Yeah.

David Dylan Thomas: But I see that both with Native American horror storytelling and African horror storytelling that are coming at it more from a place of we are intertwined with nature, and so as a result, like to kill the bad guy would be to kill yourself like it’s a different perspective, I guess I should say. It’s it’s curious to me that they’re both adopting that aesthetic.

Ron Williams: I think two things are at play with what you’re saying. One is a duality of the human soul. Of the human being, that we are both light and dark.

And that once we embrace that, then we can better understand ourselves and manage it.

And understand that, supernaturally we’re not in control.

But that within who we are, that we embody both.

David Dylan Thomas: Yeah.

Ron Williams: That’s one of the things I explored hu- in “The Beast,” that he has to come to the realization that he is both.

David Dylan Thomas: Yeah.

Ron Williams: That, he’s like, “I’m, I wanna be a good person.”

That’s not possible ’cause you’re both of these things.

With, when it comes to also what you’re talking about, remember, energy cannot be created nor destroyed, right? So it on- only can be transferred. It always is. African and Native people understand that there’s always this energy. And energy will transmute into different bodies.

And you might wanna, you might kill the, this body, that body, but that energy is coming back in another form, in another shape, and it’s still coming for you if you’ve done some dumb shit and they’re gonna deal with you. But we understood that to always be. That’s why we have symbols that are in circles, in cycles.

Right?

David Dylan Thomas: Yeah.

Ron Williams: Because it’s always coming around. It’s always going back. The spirit of the dead rise up. I’m quoting Sankofa now. Spirit of the dead rise up. What’s always rising is always falling. It’s always coming around. We operate in cycles.

We want to go into this notion of, okay, our body ends and then we go to this afterlife.

Actually, our body decomposes and then our energy gets dispersed. And depending on how things played out, we may go back into the universe or we’re going to be haunting this plane.

So I think that once we come into that understanding, our actions would be altered for the good.

David Dylan Thomas: It’s interesting too, ’cause I think about, there’s a phrase I don’t think she invented it, but the author of “Braiding Sweetgrass” talks a lot about this idea of right relationship.

And I feel like the horror coming from I would go so far as to say a lot of indigenous filmmakers, whether it’s Africa, whether it’s America or anywhere around the world frankly is thinking about that hero villain, not as hero villain, but more as two things that are not in right relationship with each other.

‘Cause I think about the, the, the white cinema, the European, the Western cinema that has started to tell those stories like “The Babadook” or “It Follows” where it’s not about defeating the monster, it’s about learning how to be in right relationship with the monster, right? And it’s, to your point, we’ve been telling those stories for centuries, but glad you, glad you’re, welcome to the chat.

Glad you finally caught on, right?

Ron Williams: Exactly.

David Dylan Thomas: But it is interesting to it denotes a different philos- philosophy, right?

Ron Williams: Yeah.

David Dylan Thomas: Starting from a place of there is the dominator and the dominated, there is the intruder, there’s the outsider and the, the- the one who belongs. There’s the other and the us, right? As this, it’s this battle dynamic versus we’re all in this mix together, and if we get out of sync, shit’s gonna go bad, real bad. But if we can get into sync, oh, okay, it’s cool. It’s cool.

Ron Williams: Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Oh, you’re so right.

You’re so right. Absolutely. And I think the more we resist, ’cause we think we’re civilized.

And so that’s where a lot of our resistance comes. If I buy more things, if I accrue more things, if I’m more rooted in civilization, if I have ascended to a certain status, then I’ll be okay, and none of that other stuff means anything.

We see that everything is going to ground. It always does because that’s the way nature is. You’re always gonna have the tornadoes and the earthquakes and the blizzards and things like that. Just to iterate once again that we’re not in control.

We’ve divorced ourselves so far away from our nature that we have forgotten.

And like a friend of mine who always says that education is about helping you to remember what you already know.

You know from birth. Why is it that we always say, “That baby’s been here before”? That baby comes in with knowledge, and then we try to impute all this other garbage on top. No way in the natural world would you be going outside for guidance and wisdom and understanding and salvation.

That’s all within because all that is within. So yeah, as we are out of sync, all those things are gonna happen to us. And then we believe that, again, by being civilized, we can escape all this stuff. And the spirit world, the natural world’s like, I’m gonna show you how you cannot escape from it.

I’m gonna show you who we are,” and you can’t comprehend this. You just need to live with it. You just need to be in harmony and balance with it.

David Dylan Thomas: Yeah.

Ron Williams: That’s the work.

David Dylan Thomas: And I think it’s interesting bringing that up. So there’s one, Bayo Ako-Ako-Akolufeme is a speaker I really and he talks a lot about trickster energies and how I think Eshu is the name of the, the Orisha, but it’s basically a trickster god, for lack of a better word. And their tricksterism is a lot around undermining our notions of separation, right?

Undermining our thoughts around the binary. And and revealing our interconnectedness a- as a form of tricksterism and r- and revealing our lack of control, right? ‘Cause I think one of the things that is scariest in horror, to your point, is a lack of control. Is finding out you’re not in control.

Body horror does this by taking the one thing you think you have control over and saying, “Nope, you’re turning into a fly, buddy. Sorry.”

Ron Williams: I was gonna say the same thing. You’re gonna be Brundlefly.

David Dylan Thomas: Yeah, buddy. I don’t know what to tell you. You can try to enjoy it if you want.

He seems to be digging it a little bit, but yeah, that’s, but this train ain’t stopping.

Ron Williams: Yeah.

David Dylan Thomas: Or you have cosmic horror, which I kinda wanna circle back to, ’cause you’re saying– talking a little bit about cosmicness which I’ve been getting into a lot lately, that basically says “Oh, no you think you’re unique? You think you’re special? You think you’re important? Oh my God, dude, you are the tiniest tiniest little speck of dust on the beach. In fact, the world, the universe is so big, were you actually see your place in it, you would go insane.”

Ron Williams: Yeah.

David Dylan Thomas: “We’re protecting you by not letting you… It’s like don’t read that book.” That book will kill you ’cause you’ll find out just how unimportant you really are. Don’t go into that town. Don’t ask any questions ’cause you are not gonna like the answers, right? But all of that is this notion of the, the horror is about vastness. That’s why they call it cosmic horror. It’s like-

Oh, yeah, dude, you– Trust me. Just stay in your little town.

Ron Williams: Yes.

David Dylan Thomas: Stay in your city. Do your little job. Yeah. You do not wanna knock on the door of reality.

Ron Williams: Yeah. Oh, yes. As I often say, humans are the Sweathogs of intelligent life forms.

David Dylan Thomas: What does that mean?

Ron Williams: The Sweathogs?

David Dylan Thomas: Yeah. Oh, the Sweathogs from “Welcome Back, Kotter.” Oh, yeah. Very much.

Ron Williams: So like the remedial kids.

David Dylan Thomas: Very much.

Ron Williams: Yes.

David Dylan Thomas: Oh my God.

Ron Williams: And that’s who we are as, as, as a human species. There are so many that are that of course we’ll never meet, that are far superior and more intelligent than we are.

But we are at the basement.

David Dylan Thomas: Yeah.

Ron Williams: We are at the basement. Does- doesn’t “In the Mouth of Madness” doesn’t that explore that a bit?

David Dylan Thomas: I was gonna, I was gonna say, I think yes, t- first of all and what it does… I’m trying to remember exactly what we were talking about before that made me think of it. I wa- I re-watched it recently, so I very much have it on the brain. But one of the things it does, and I would recommend folks go see the new Jane Schoenbrun “Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma” ’cause it also does a really good job of twisting reality in a way that makes you question reality, like deeply. But what “In the Mouth of Madness” does is very much that cosmic horror thing of saying, “Not only are you not significant, you’re not even real.”

Like you are a, a fictional character. And the line that Jurgen Prochnow has in that, which blows my mind every time, is he’s, he plays this, this author who may very well be authoring reality. He says “I think therefore you are.” And I’m like, “Oh, shit.” That’s a villain, man. And I think one of the things I like about these conversations is that becomes a very fungible concept because hearing it the first time, I’m like, “Oh, that’s a badass line.”

Hearing it now I’m like, “Oh, that’s the mindset of the right.” When Elon Musk says, “You are all NPCs,” that’s what he’s talking about. He believes, he truly believes that because he thinks we are.

Ron Williams: Yeah.

David Dylan Thomas: I think s- I think he thinks on some level if he dies, we all die. We all just cease to exist.

Like that attitude is very much the attitude of authoritarianism of, of ego, right? And I think that, I think that some of the horror we experience today, going back to our conversation about horror being about the consequences, the only thing more horrible than consequences are no consequences.

Like I think that’s the horror we live with, at least I live with today when I’m like, “He did what? And he’s just gonna walk around free.” Oh no, he’s gonna make more money. Okay. All right. Okay.

Ron Williams: All right. Just all, all the, yeah, all the empires.

The, the rulers became the demigods, right?

“I am,” and like you to your point, “I am. You are because I am.”

And it reminds me this line I always use, Hannibal Lecter when he says, “If one does as God does enough times, one becomes as God is.”

David Dylan Thomas: Oh my God, that might as well be like the fucking manosphere’s motto.

Ron Williams: Yeah.

David Dylan Thomas: That is totally what they’re going for.

Ron Williams: Yeah. Absolutely. When you get to that super, super wealth. When you when you see that your actions go uninterrupted, then you, you feel that you have ascended. I am like God. Like you on the top of the Tower of Babel.

And it’s not gonna fall down, so yeah, they’re, they’re– They have been acting on impunity. It’s been growing over decades, and now, it’s the global thing. Remember we– the idea of globalization.

So that, that has manifested exponentially And so these folks are sitting at the top saying, “I’m king of the world.”

James Cameron was doing it in another context. They were really like, “I’m king of the world,” so t- to your point, yeah, the no consequences. Thank God we are still delving into consequences within the realm of horror. But if these folks started making movies, they’d be making about themselves.

David Dylan Thomas: Yeah.

Ron Williams: “It’s good to be the king.”

David Dylan Thomas: Yeah.

Ron Williams: While they put the square peg in the round hole.

David Dylan Thomas: Yeah. Yeah. I know for a fact we could go on for another three hours ’cause that’s literally what we did when we first met.

Ron Williams: Oh, yes. Yeah.

David Dylan Thomas: But I’m gonna-

Ron Williams: That was a great conversation

David Dylan Thomas: That was so fun. So I’m gonna stop this here for now. I wanna have you back on. Honestly, I think I wanna just start a podcast with you because we…

Ron Williams: Oh, that would be lovely.

David Dylan Thomas: Like a philosophy and horror podcast, but, we have so much more ground to cover. But for now I’m gonna let you tell us where we can keep up with you with your work.

Ron Williams: Okay. I have my YouTube channel, “Prophet of Horror,” and I also have a Patreon page where for a cup of coffee you could support what I’m doing with the film. That’s “Prophet of Horror” as well, Patreon. Hopefully soon we’ll be starting, we’ll be launching a Kickstarter campaign for the film.

David Dylan Thomas: Nice. Let me know. I’ll absolutely amplify that shit.

Ron Williams: Oh yeah, absolutely. Thank you. I’m on Instagram, “Prophet of Horror,” so you can keep up with me there as well. Th- those are my three avenues: Instagram, YouTube, and the Patreon. But I appreciate you so much, David. This has been wonderful, great conversation.

Congratulations once again on “White Meat Appetizer.” It’s one of those… I think long term it’s gonna be listed as one of the profound horror pieces. I hope beyond not just horror noir, but that conversation of, “Oh, okay, this is one of the pieces that you need to look at.”

David Dylan Thomas: I would very much like that.

Ron Williams: Oh, yeah. Yeah, absolutely.

David Dylan Thomas: Ron, it’s been great talking to you.

Ron Williams: Yes.

David Dylan Thomas: And for the “White Meat” podcast, this is David Dylan  Thomas. We will see you all next time.

Ron Williams: Thank you.