Two weeks after South by Southwest, senior editor Roxanne Bogucka sat down with author Joe Lansdale in the dealers’ room of science fiction convention AggieCon.

Roxanne Bogucka: … I’m talking to Joe Lansdale, author of “Bubba Ho-tep.” Good morning.

Jon Lansdale: Good morning, how are you?

RB: I’m fine thanks… I saw you at South by Southwest, and had you seen Bubba Ho-tep with an audience before?

JL: Yes, as a matter of fact I saw it in Las Vegas at its premiere and I’ve seen it several times since—in Houston and then of course in Austin, yeah.

RB: The South by Southwest audience was extremely appreciative. They whooped and hollered. Is that what you’ve been seeing mostly?

JL: Yeah, and they’ve been turning people away in droves, too. People want to see this film. And it’s been very exciting and I’ve really loved it.

RB: Well we really loved the film, and at South by Southwest it was a midnight screening and it was in rather small venues. I think two of the three times it was a midnight screening. And it’s so much a midnight movie. What do you think makes it such a midnight movie?

JL: I think that people, when they go to midnight movies, want to see something that they’re not going to see normally on television, or normally on video, which, especially when it’s brand new, something that’s so unique and it’s just coming from out of left field. And I think that’s what Bubba does.

RB: Definitely does that. A lot of people that I’ve talked to who’ve seen the movie now say that they can imagine it being a long-running midnight movie, taking on—you know, even though it hasn’t been distributed for theatrical—yet they can see it taking on this sort of long life that a Rocky Horror has or something. What do you think about that and why do you think that is?

JL: It has a cult aspect. And I think it’s because it’s dealing with cult figures—Elvis, JFK, and of course the old mummy and the horror aspect. And to some extent, Bruce Campbell is a cult figure in acting. Don [Coscarelli] is a cult figure in directing, and whether I like it or not, I have a cult audience along with my mainstream audience. And “Bubba Ho-tep” itself, as a story, is a cult story. I mean when I wrote that story several years ago, I would’ve never dreamed it would be filmed. Never. But once they did it, I realized… this taps into a lot of things that people are interested in.

RB: Who did the screenplay?

JL: Don did the screenplay from my novella, but it’s almost… it’s close to being verbatim. It’s very very close. It’s about 95%. The other 5% was some things they couldn’t do. They just didn’t have the ability to do them financially, for special effects and stuff. But it’s very close. Very close.

RB: I had read the story in a collection, I think called The King Is Alive or maybe it’s The King Is Dead—

JL: Dead.

RB: Yeah. Interestingly enough, I had an interview a few months ago with Bruce Campbell when he came to Austin touring behind If Chins Could Kill, and I had not seen the movie yet, so I was asking him how realistic [to the story] it was going to be and I teased him a bit about whether he was going to do the nudity. He said no.

JL: [laughs] Yeah, one of the things he wanted to know, the first thing he asked Don, he says, “Are we going to show the penis?” That was a big deciding factor.

RB: Well in horror they say what you don’t see is scarier.

JL: That is definitely the case here. He did a marvelous job too. I think it’s his best acting job. I think it’s the best thing he’s ever done. He’s always fun, but in this one I think he really put on his acting chops. And I think he went in there after it. And then Ossie Davis is just amazing. And one of the things about Ossie is, I went out and watched when they were filming—four or five days we were out there—and I’d watch Ossie and he didn’t seem to be doing much. And I said, “You know, Ossie’s always so terrific but he’s…” I said to my son, “He doesn’t seem to be doing much. He seems kind of laid-back.” And then when I saw it on film, I said, “God, that man’s a genius!” Because he knows exactly how much it takes. He knows when to look at the camera. He knows how. There is a pro. He’s been a hero of mine for years anyway, not only for film but for civil rights, and so many things that he’s involved with. And to have him in a film of mine, I felt like Bruce Campbell: “Ossie? What are you doing in this film?” [laughs]

RB: So Bubba Ho-tep was your first thing that was filmed, I guess? But now you have Mucho Mojo coming?

JL: Well I’ve actually had options since the late ’80s. I’ve probably had 25 different things optioned and some of them optioned 10 times, 7 times. But Mucho Mojo has been optioned by Studio Canal with David Goyer set to direct and Ted Tally, who did Silence Of The Lambs, did the screenplay. I love the screenplay. They’re trying to cast actors now. The Big Blow was optioned by Ridley Scott and Neil Edelstein, and Dead In The West was optioned by another company. I have numerous options right now. So we can hope, you know?

RB: Fabulous. I look forward to seeing some of those. Sometimes when things are adapted—you sound like you’ve had really good luck with Don Coscarelli, who was very faithful to your work—what do you think makes a movie script work? Sometimes they’re very faithful and people complain. Like there’ve been complaints for example about the J.K. Rowling adaptations for the movies with Harry Potter, because some people said they were too faithful, but then here’s Bubba Ho-tep that was very faithful and very good. What’s the magic?

JL: I think it just depends. It’s almost impossible to put your finger on that. Some things will adapt very well. Now frankly I thought this was totally unadaptable. When he first wanted to option, I said, “Don, what are you thinking? You can’t film this.” And then later on when he was doing the screenplay—he asked me to do the screenplay, and I said, “Don. It can’t be done, man. You can do this but it just won’t happen.” He did the screenplay, I read it, and I said, “You just put the story.” And he said, “Yeah, I told you.” So Don was right. So I think that it has a lot to do with the individual story. There are some things that won’t adapt well. But I think what ultimately I thought wouldn’t adapt was exactly what did adapt. It was the uniqueness of it, and the oddness of it. And just the juxtaposition of such seemingly unconnected elements, and yet we found that connection. I found it, I think, in the story, and he took that and he found some other way to emphasize those connections. And I think it was beautiful. Because what you’ve got is, you got these legendary people, Elvis and JFK, and none of us want them to have gone out like they went out. And so we really do see it as a tribute to those people in its own kind of little bizarre, comic way.

RB: They could go out like heroes.

JL: Yeah, like heroes. Yeah.

RB: So. Now that you’ve seen basically Don did the story, you have any temptation whatsoever to write a screenplay?

JL: Well I’ve written them and I’ve actually sold two and optioned several. So I’ve done it before and that’s one reason Don wanted me to do it. But we plan on working together in the future, so… I’ve got a screenplay for something and it may well be next. So we’ll see.

RB: What would you like to see? Have you ever had something you wrote that you were like, “Wow! I’d really like to see this made into a film.”

JL: Well yeah, I think several of them. The Bottoms, right now there’s a possibility it may be a film. It’s a favorite novel of mine. The thing is, you want to see it made into a film if it can be filmed correctly. And I’m like that about The Magic Wagon. What I fear is that—it’s one of mine that I’m really, really close to—it would be filmed and not be so good, you know. But I think The Bottoms and The Magic Wagon and A Fine Dark Line and the Hap and Leonard series, I’d love to see those things filmed.

RB: Thank you very much.