Kolchak: The Night Stalker might be best known as a movie and TV series, but it was the original novel by Jeff Rice that started it all. Monstrous Books will be bringing the book back to print, as well as offering an audiobook with Blackstone Audio. Actor William Katt, who played Tommy Ross in the classic horror movie Carrie and the lead in the hit show The Greatest American Hero, lends his voice talents to narrate the book. Katt spoke to Cemetery Dance about how Kolchak influenced The Greatest American Hero, what it was like working on his first audiobook, and some fun memories from filming Carrie.
(Interview conducted by Danica Davidson)
CEMETERY DANCE: What is your background with Kolchak?
WILLIAM KATT: I was approached by James Aquilone at Monstrous Books about a year and a half ago. We talked mainly about Greatest American Hero because we had a short run of three comics of Greatest American Hero back in 2008. That’s why he first approached me. He was interested in wanting to see if we wanted to try and reboot that with his help. We entertained that idea, and I thought that was the last of it.
Then he got back in touch with me, four or five months ago. I was at a con back east and he came to the table and said, “Hey, would you ever think about doing an audiobook with us?” And he mentioned Kolchak. I had only seen Kolchak briefly in passing back in ’72, one of the first Movie of the Weeks. I thought it was very, very interesting years ago, but it didn’t embed itself in me until recently. I saw it again when he approached me. I was very intrigued by Darren McGavin’s performance.
I said, “I’ll take a crack at this, see if I can pay homage to him [Kolchak] and Darren, and Dan Curtis’s great work as a director.” I wasn’t real familiar with Jeffrey Rice up until revisiting these Movie of the Weeks. I’d been remiss; I did not see many episodes of the TV series.
Just as a side note, I was reading that Johnny Depp’s company is developing this script with Edgar Wright, who did Shaun of the Dead and Scott Pilgrim. I think they are planning on doing something, although they haven’t started shooting yet.
How would you say Kolchak has laid the groundwork for shows like The Greatest American Hero?
Oh, you know, I was talking about that with someone else. It was one of the first series where it was always chasing a zombie or a werewolf or something supernatural every week. Kolchak was a huge influence for Chris Carter in The X-Files. This was when Steve Cannell was doing The Rockford Files and so many other of those wonderful shows. I can’t help but think that Kolchak influenced The Greatest American Hero, because although we didn’t always chase monsters every week, there was always something catastrophic going on with the plot line. Although, we kind of did it with a wink to the camera, we played and looked right at the camera. I don’t think Carl Kolchak did that. But there were a lot of similarities there, I think.
What did you think reading the novel?
It really holds your attention. If you start reading, by page 10 you can’t put it down. It’s terrific. I like the fact that Kolchak is an investigative reporter. He’s after the truth and he’s a skeptic as well, initially. He does not want to believe that there’s a real vampire out there. It’s through his reporting that he slowly comes to that conclusion that it’s a real vampire. Then of course he has to try and convince the authorities. He has to try to convince his boss, Tony Vincenzo, played wonderfully by Simon Oakland.
How did you approach narrating it? Is this your first audiobook?
It is, it is! And they were so patient with me at Blackstone when I was doing this. I said, “Guys, you got to give me a little bit more time because I’m a little bit — although I hate to admit it — I’m a little bit dyslexic.” Not completely. But I was never a great reader. It takes me a long time, even when I’ve read many, many scripts. It takes me a while to ingest that and go really live in those characters.
Doing the audiobook was interesting because it’s not at all like acting. It is a little bit. What you’re doing is basically cold reading and while you’re cold reading this, even as familiar as I got with the book, when you’re essentially cold reading a page at a time, you have to really pay attention to every syllable, every vowel. All the little nuances and characterizations, they have to be spot on. That’s hard to do.
I think I really got the better part of Darren McGavin’s performance in that. Probably people most remember him from A Christmas Story when he played the dad. Later on he was the dad in the Adam Sandler film Billy Madison. I don’t know if anyone else remembers that. It was a really good film. I was just happy to be a part of it. I think it’s a really good book. Blackstone always does a very good job with their audiobooks.
Dipping into your background with horror, do you have any fun stories from working on Carrie?
Oh, Carrie! Well, it was great. I mean, we were all in our early 20s at the time. I think I was 23, 24. We were all just young guys and girls and we were getting paid to go and just have fun. And obviously do the work.
I really enjoyed working with [director Brian] De Palma. Sissy [Spacek] and I were already neighbors. We both lived up in Topanga Canyon at the time. So I knew Sissy and her husband Jack.
On the set, really the most fun that I ever had was when we were doing the dance, the prom night. That was like two weeks of work. All of us were there together, all the kids and everything. Because I didn’t work with John [Travolta] or Nancy [Allen] in most of my time on that film. I was primarily working with Amy Irving or working with Sissy Spacek. But during those two weeks, we just had such a fun time. And John was very gracious and lovely. I remember him trying to teach a bunch of us a soft shoe dance one day.
Is there anything else you’re working on you’d like to talk about?
This last year I did a film with Alfred Molina. Everybody knows him from the Spider-Man films where he played Doctor Octopus. It’s a really good little independent film called When We Get There, and I worked with Mindy Sterling, who has worked a lot with Mike Myers. She’s formerly a Grounding member. She was a nut in the best sense of the word. We had just a really fun time working together. That’ll be out some time in the spring, I suppose.
That’s pretty much it for me right now. I don’t pursue a lot of work these days. I’m quite content to hang with my wife and play music a lot. I have a little studio at the house. I’m always playing music. I was playing with a little jazz group for a while, for about five or six years. But the two guys I played with — it was just a little trio — they’ve moved away. So I’m stuck here entertaining myself.
