INT: Kenny Yakkel

Last Updated on July 27, 2021

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Now first things first, I love horror movies, so when a
guy who’s a true fan gets a chance to make one, there is nothing better. And
that’s the beauty of Kenny Yakkel’s DEAD AIR. Inspired by early Romero films
and the tragedy on 9/11, he shifts gears on the old idea behind WAR OF THE
WORLDS and creates what looks to be a cool thriller about zombies and an on-air
personality hearing the cries from outside the safety of the radio station.

When I sat down with
Kenny on the set of DEAD AIR, I found a man who truly loves horror and keeps
himself busy with all things dark and spooky, including producing credits for
the animated short series, XOMBIE. And if we are really good, Mr. Yakkel and
director Corbin Bernson (THE DENTIST) will be collaborating again on THE CLOWN,
which if all goes well, will be shooting before the end of the year. Thanks for
the heads up Kenny!

Where did the script for “Dead Air” come from?

Last year, it was about this time I’d written a script for
Stephen Polk. He had commissioned me; he’s one of the producers. And it wasn’t
something I really enjoyed because it was somebody else’s idea. So I had to
hammer their idea out and when it was done, he said, ‘let’s do another one’ and
I was like, ‘only if it’s one of my ideas’. I pitched him this one, for “Dead
Air” and he said, ‘alright, that’s the one to go with’. I wrote it for him and
it shifted hands, gave it to these guys at Antibody Films, Jesse and Chris;
they’re the producing team so their making it actually happen so… Steven’s got
his producer credit on the side so I’m now dealing straight with these guys so…
basically it was my 9/11 and bring George Romero into the mix, you know. It’s
basically the story of… my intention was to reverse “War of the Worlds”, what
Orson Welles did over the radio broadcast that scared the shit out of everybody
nationwide on Halloween of whatever year that was.

And instead I thought, wouldn’t it be cool if we had
something happening and these guys are stuck in a radio station and everyone’s
calling in on their cell phones, ‘Oh, they’re pulling people out of their cars!”
and all that shit. That way we’re saving expense. We don’t have to go and do
what Spielberg did with that movie “War of the Worlds” and show all that stuff.
Seventy-two pages takes place on that set right there so it’s almost like a
play. It’s sort of a play on people’s fears and it’s not your traditional
zombie movie where the guy’s are walking around eating flesh. It’s more of a,
terrorist gas blows up at a sporting event and now everyone’s infected and they
freak out and turn into your like, “28 Days Later” maniac.

And they’re like they are on PCP and they just have to
scratch at whatever they get, and if you’re one of the unfortunate ones that
gets scratched, now you’re one of them so it spreads expediential. And
ultimately the guy that set it up, the main bad terrorist guy that sets it off
ends up at the radio station. And his whole thing is holding the gun on Bill
Moseley’s character who is kind of the Howard Stern guy and says, get on the air
and tell everyone there is a nuclear bomb about to go off and that they need to
get out of their houses. So the whole point is that they want more people to
flood into the streets…

To infect them?

Yeah. It’s kind of a double plan thing you know; let’s
scare the hell out of them. And Bill’s playing it, you know, I don’t wanna do
that and have all these people die. One of the story plot points is that he has
a wife that lives across town and he’s doing sort of a Howard Stern, just
bashing out on Middle Eastern people and everything, but as it turns out it’s
his “act”. And he’s doing like a Stern act and across town his wife is a Middle
Eastern woman.

It’s kind of an interesting twist and he wants to go save
her, but he’s on the air and his sidekick who is played by David Moscow who
played young Tom Hanks in “Big”; he’s the sidekick; he’s sort of the Artie Lange
to Howard Stern. And he says, well, I have a Japanese motorcycle, I can get to
your wife, weaving in and out of all these people, so I’m gonna take the chance
to go save your family. So now this kind of asshole-y Howard Stern type guy
says wow, this guy I’ve been beating up all these years as my partner, he’s a
really special guy and it kind of changes their relationship. It’s an
interesting little, weird twist; I tried to throw a little political aspect into
it like Romero used to do it all the time.

Still does…

Yeah, he still does. And I just thought, well, I like horror movies that have a
little something other than a cat jumping out at you in the dark or something
like that.

Well you look back at the Seventies and all those horror movies that are
influential today were almost all political.

Those were my favorite movies.

They rocked dude.

I loved the slasher Eighties movies and all the “Saw’s”
were okay. But the Seventies… the TV movies were better back then than the
theatrical releases. I loved seeing stuff like “Gargoyles” and “Duel” and all
those cool things…

“Let’s Scare Jessica to Death”… did you see that?

That’s good too. I hear they’re remaking it. [We both
cringe] So that’s the craze in Hollywood because when they go to producers. The
producers say to the investors it’s a proven market, that’s why everything’s
being remade. “Day of the Dead” is about to be remade. I’m trying to avoid as
many remakes as I can.

Well this must be a dream come true for you…

It is. It’s great. I’ve been out here in LA since 1990.
I’ve been working on… I came out here specifically to write horror films, and
comedies. I like writing comedies as well. And for fifteen years it was really
tough. I got work as a dolly grip and I worked for fifteen years on some big
stuff. I worked three years on “Babylon 5”; that’s how I met Patty Tallman. I
did stuff on “The West Wing” and “Buffy the Vampire Slayer”. I did movies; I
was the dolly grip on “Killing Zoe”, the Roger Avary movie. So I did a lot of
stuff, so I’d take a job and take some time off and write a script, take another
job. And I did that for fifteen years. And finally, I said God; I just can’t
get my foot in the door. That’s when I just started concentrating on all the
websites like ARROW IN THE HEAD and Bloody Disgusting and I was seeing what was
being sold. And I’d see “Saw” is being sold so I’d write a movie like “Saw”…
that genre. Sure enough, about a month after I wrote it, I landed my first
agent and about two weeks after he had it… he had set up a deal with Element
Films International as an output deal with Lionsgate.

So this is going back about a year. I thought, dude, this
is it… this is my next big thing. This is the movie. It was called “The
Janitor’s Zoo”. They loved it, they optioned it, they went through two-hundred
directors, they finally got the guy they wanted. It was a young hot-shot guy;
he’s got stuff set up at Fox. And then they wanted me to change the script a
little bit. They said, make it a little more like this… and I said that’s a
little too much like “Saw”, you’re going too much like “Saw”. I made the
changes and they finally came back a couple of weeks later and they said, after
six months, It’s too much like “Saw”, were going to drop it. I guess it just
had something to do with…

I guess Lionsgate ended up releasing “Saw”, and too much
similarity. That was my big, big break and it just fell away, so I was thrilled
when this actually popped up. So I’m jazzed and hopefully this’ll start the
ball rolling again. I’ve got a bunch of stuff out there right now that’s
shopping around. My wife is a line producer and she just signed a deal with Ken
Foree from “Dawn of the Dead”. And they have a contract now that they are gonna
go looking for money to produce another script of mine called “Burning the
Man”. And that would be a much bigger budget then this one. It’s gonna be
pretty exciting if they can pull that one together. My wife just started a
production company last year. She’s done a few things, if she’s not producing
she’ll take a few production jobs, she did “Devil’s Den” last year.

With “Dead Air”, I am really impressed with the cast
that you have.

Yeah, they had thrown a few names out but they weren’t
horror actors. And like nobody’s going to want to go see a horror movie with
Richard Dean Anderson. Let’s call Bill Moseley. And I knew Pat from “Babylon
5” so we pulled that in and we also have, the guy that played Dozer from “The
Matrix” [Anthony Ray Parker], the big guy. He hasn’t worked yet so I haven’t
met him. And Navid Negahban, who plays the “heavy”, the bad guy. He’s gonna be
doing a Mike Nichols movie [“Charlie Wilson’s War”] opposite Tom Hanks with
Philip Seymour Hoffman and Julia Roberts too. So he’s going on to some really
big stuff after he finishes this. He may not be as recognizable to the horror
crowd but he’s got good acting chops. It’s gonna be pretty exciting.

Let me know what you think. Send
questions and comments to
[email protected].

CHECK OUT OUR DEAD AIR SET VISIT HERE