Ari Loeb’s credits include being a writer, a stuntman, a dancer, and an acrobat. You might have seen him as a zombie on TV or in a video game. But it was his work as Nicolas Cage’s movement coach on the movie Renfield that inspired his latest book, The Stunted Man. Loeb spoke to Cemetery Dance about his work in creature horror, how he got into writing, and the small-world scenario of finding his audiobook narrator.
(Interviews conducted by Danica Davidson)
CEMETERY DANCE: Can you please tell us about your background?
ARI LOEB: I grew up as a contemporary dancer and circus artist in Los Angeles and New York. After touring with various dance companies, I eventually joined Cirque du Soleil. When the Cirque tours ended (our show closed), I moved back to New York to work on the Spider-Man musical on Broadway. That was four years of work, and I met some stunt guys on the show. I became intrigued by what they did, and, having grown up in Los Angeles, I had already been thinking about moving out of New York and sort of giving up the arts and moving back to LA. I thought stunts would be a good fit for me. So, after Spider-Man closed, I moved back to LA and basically started over. Got a new email address, started training Taekwondo and learning the stunt industry — the etiquette, terminology, cars, weapons, safety — basic stunt performer stuff. Eventually, I started to get jobs. And then I was a stuntman. That’s been ten years doing stunts, and now here I am.
I’ve always been a big reader, especially horror, and I started writing about fourteen years ago, something like that. This is actually my second novel. It’s about a stuntman, and it kind of reflects what I know from my career. The protagonist has a circus background, and he’s a little older than what’s conventional in the stunt world. That’s where my background meets the new novel.
You’ve done a lot of work in creature horror. How did that come about?
When I first started doing stunts, The Walking Dead was just blowing up. That was pretty much the biggest show. Between The Walking Dead, Game of Thrones and the Marvel Cinematic Universe, those were like, the goals. And I like zombies! I love the way they walk. I used to draw them as a kid. I started doing zombies on some video games, and then people brought me into other things, and for some reason I got a call from the stunt coordinator on Fear the Walking Dead, asking for a demo of some zombie movement stuff. I went minimal. They brought me in to do some work on Fear the Walking Dead, and I ended up doing five seasons of that. Fear led to other Walking Dead shows: Tales of The Walking Dead, the original Walking Dead, The Walking Dead: Dead City, and a Walking Dead video game. I kind of stuck around with those guys, and they even gave me my own contact lenses and disgusting dentures. I also worked with the team on Zombieland: Double Tap as a movement coach and a featured zombie. The fight coordinator from that, along with Woody Harrelson’s stunt double, were coordinating this new film, Renfield, a Dracula story. They hired me as Nicolas Cage’s movement specialist, and as part of the core stunt team, helping out with the fight scenes and things like that. Before I knew it, I guess I was the creature horror guy.
When you say you’re doing zombies in video games, what do you mean?
In video games, those are pretty much always real actors playing the characters. I mean, even in a first-person shooter, when you see the hands holding the gun, that’s a real person holding the gun. The camera is set where their eyes would be, and the characters he or she’s fighting are real humans. Even dragons and creatures and everything are played by humans, and their skeletons are mapped out using motion capture technology. Then “skins” and additional animation are added on to that to make them into characters. One time, I played a truck. The animators and directors have a shot list, and we just do everything, all the fighting, the falling down, riding motorcycles, jumping off of things, cut scenes and QuickTime movies throughout video games. There are zombie games like Resident Evil and The Walking Dead — video games where you have a lot of zombie performances. I started getting brought in to do that stuff.
So you do stunts and zombie performances. Do they overlap?
Oh yeah. Anytime there’s action happening near a human being, that’s a stunt. When we’re fighting, we’re not actually hitting each other, usually. It just looks like we are, and the sound effects, reactions, and camera placement tell the story. Even if we’re not getting hit, it’s still a stunt. But usually, we are getting hit with something, and we’re always falling to the ground. Let’s say an easy day on a zombie show would be getting stabbed in the head, and falling down. Or you get thrown over there, into a big pile, or something. Those are all stunt performers in the zombie makeup. On one episode, we can play multiple zombies. One day you’re one, and the next day you’re a different zombie, and they keep going on like that. Also, if a stunt performer resembles one of the actors, they can go in and double that character. We light zombies on fire, throw them off boats, send them down the stairs, throw ten of them down the stairs at the same time, we hit them with cars, shove them through windows and breakaway walls, shoot them with .50 caliber machine guns, whatever feels right. The joy of the show is obliterating monsters. That’s where the stunt performers come in.
How did Renfield lead to this new book?
I’m a little bit older now, and it’s been a long career. The body changes, and I’ve started to face the future. The film The Wrestler by Darren Aronofsky really struck a chord with me, and while it didn’t really spawn the idea for my story, the overall concept stuck with me a long time, I guess twelve years now. When I was working on Renfield, it was such an authentic setting — not just New Orleans and making a Universal monster movie, but also being on the stunt team, a sort of secret society. A lot of great stories invite the reader into a secret society, say Hogwarts, or the Chocolate Factory, or The Secret History by Donna Tartt. In terms of world building, I knew what I needed to know about stunts and stunt performers, and the way the films are made. There are long sequences in the novel about the details of prosthetics and makeup effects, the details of the rigging, and the sort of fancy information that readers love. So, here you have a fantastical environment, you have a secret society, and all this inside knowledge on how filmmaking is done. I thought it made a good backdrop for a novel. Add in the horror of middle age, the darkness of addiction, and the dangers of stunt work, and a story begins to announce itself. Here’s this aging stunt performer with a host of injuries, financial woes, and problems with addiction. He doesn’t fit in with the stunt team — in this case, a bunch of yee-haws and gym rats and younger people. There’s this athletic drive to get back up, which the main character is definitely used to, but he’s starting to have trouble getting back up again. At what point does he bottom out?
I was Nic Cage’s movement coach on Renfield, and I thought it would be neat if the protagonist got a job as a movement coach for an uber-famous actor. I thought that was charming. He’s given a lot of chances to redeem himself and do something that (in his mind) is great, and that people will love. But he has difficulty getting it done, and it doesn’t end up going very well for him.
You got Nicolas Cage to endorse The Stunted Man. How did that happen? Did he know you were working on it?
He did not. Once I was pretty much through the editing process, I emailed him and said, “Hey, I’ve been working on this book.” When we were working together, we talked about literature a lot. His father was a professor of literature, and he loves books and horror. I guess it was almost two years after we wrapped on that film that I sent him an email to say, “Hey, I wrote this novel. It’s about a stuntman who is working as a movement coach for an uber-famous actor, and I’d like you to look at it and make sure there isn’t anything that points to you or you want me to change. You might enjoy it.” He wrote me back and said, “That sounds lovely. Send me a copy.”
I sent it to him, and a couple weeks later he sent me a really nice email. Normally, his correspondences are just a couple of words. Here, it was a short paragraph. I said, “This is incredible. Can I use this blurb, and publish it on the book? I won’t publish your words unless you say I can.” He wrote back, “Yeah, sure — sent from my iPhone.” And I was happy.
Can you tell us about your audiobook for The Stunted Man?
That was a lot of fun. I found [narrator] Jason Douglas somewhat randomly. I had an actor who I worked with on my last novel, but he lives in New York, and I was trying to avoid doing it over Zoom. My New York actor couldn’t get to LA, and I couldn’t get to New York. We couldn’t figure out the time. So, I started looking for other actors. I was searching on an online interface for voice actors, and I found this guy. He didn’t have a name on the website, just a member ID. I listened to some of his samples, and they were fantastic, exactly what I was going for. I eventually found his name and his agent. It turned out Jason was a major character on The Walking Dead, which I found to be a nice confluence. I wrote to his agent and told her my master plan. She showed Jason the book, and he said he loved it, and he would be happy to join me on the project. He did a killer job, an assassin’s job. And we’ve become friends since then.
Can you tell us more about your other books?
My first novel is called Thunder, AZ, and it’s about a very small town (if you could even call it a small town) in Northern Arizona that falls victim to a series of paranormal events that end up devastating the town. The story follows a college boy, sort of a mousy, normal, white bread protagonist, as he protects his mother from this storm of horrors. It’s definitely a desert apocalyptic sci-fi horror, and it’s a lot of fun. The audiobook is also a good ride. You’ll get to hear my friend Matt Caplan — musician and Broadway veteran — narrate that audiobook with vigor.
Where can people learn more about you and your work?
My website, AriLoeb.com, has a short bio about me, as well as a list of my works and some of my other ventures. You can also purchase the books from my website, or on Amazon.
I have a photography series that is also horror adjacent (liossoart.com). It takes my dance and circus background, and uses it to manipulate circus artists, contorting their bodies into the faces of animals and skulls. It is darkly beautiful and organic. The stunts, the writing, and the photography kind of make a little triangle that, for now, is my platform in the horror community.
