Interview with Screenwriter Mike Ede: Those Things, “Team Bonding,” and “All I want for Christmas is… YOU!” (2024)
Fresh off another festival victory, Best Short Script from Days of the Dead, Indianapolis for “All I want for Christmas is YOU!,” Mike Ede is here to discuss the recent prize-winner as well as two other celebrated terrors, his feature script Those Things and short script “Team Bonding.”
Those Things
In this feature script, Shaun loses his job and has nothing but problems with his ex-wife, but that won’t keep him from being the best dad to his only son, Jack. Well, nothing except for the fact that he starts to realize that some people aren’t people at all. They appear to be… Those Things! Shaun jumps into action to keep his son (and himself) safe from these otherworldly beings that only he can see. Why is it that only he can see them? Can he keep everyone safe?
“Team Bonding”
This short script follows a group of co-workers on a chartered bus trip to spend time at a corporate retreat to enhance team bonding. As the bus makes stops along the way, picking up more and more co-workers, the group aboard wonders if this retreat is all it was advertised to be. At each stop, we learn more and more that the people on board have disturbing pasts, and the coincidences start to mount. By the time they reach their destination, will the co-workers form the bond that’s intended?
“All I want for Christmas is… YOU!”
This short script centers around two Christmas juggernauts in the music industry who compete each holiday season for the title of Greatest Christmas Entertainer of All Time, one a US Diva, the other a Canadian Crooner. When the Diva books a family vacation at the same resort the Crooner always books with his family, thus bumping his family out of their planned vacation, he takes matters into his own hands (as one does) and decides to go on social media to attack her. While he does so, her fans launch a smear campaign to get him “cancelled.” His loving wife sees the trainwreck approaching due to his carelessness and sends a direct message to the Diva inviting her and her family to their house for a holiday dinner to clear the air. She happily accepts. As they arrive, things aren’t right, and quickly the family realizes this may have been a bad idea. Some things should not be invited into your home, and they may have invited in something they were not prepared for.
The Interview
1. Sympathy for Shaun. In Those Things, Shaun seems likable because of his devotion to his son, but he also seems to have some pretty significant… problems… that run deeper than conflicts with his ex-wife. Is the (eventual) viewer likely to see where his ex-wife is coming from, possibly even take her side, or does your script position the viewer to be mostly or entirely pro-Shaun? To pose the question more broadly, how would you describe Shaun in general, and how sympathetic is he? Do you expect attitudes to change toward him as the story develops?
ME: The stories that usually draw me in are ones where I’m drawn into a character (early) but then something happens where I start to question if I bet on the wrong horse lol. That’s exactly what I was trying to do with this story. I wanted people to really like Shaun and root for him from the start, but as the story unfolds, I really hope they waver. Or maybe they won’t. That’s the fun with storytelling. The audience gets to choose what experience they have.
2. Comp Things. Reading the description of Those Things, I thought of two comps (comparable films, useful when pitching a script to a potential producer): Frailty (2001) and, more distantly, They Live (1988), both classics with cult followings. Did either of those films influence you? Those two films have very different tones, the former being rather serious, the latter being a little tongue-in-cheek. Which would you say is closer to the tone of Those Things? Why did you decide on that tone, and how do you establish the tone in your writing?
ME: I’m blown away that you picked up on both films’ influence, especially Frailty. They Live is a true classic and a comp I’d lean heavily toward for this script. The story of a wanderer (John Nada) who stumbles on some special sunglasses that when worn, help the wearer see that people aren’t who they say they are. Then does anything he can to convince others of it. I love that story but felt a drifter/wanderer didn’t pull people in as much as the story of maybe a single father would. That’s where Frailty shines. The relationship between a father and his sons is where this story and mine are similar. Much like Shaun in my story, the father in Frailty (played brilliantly by the late/great Bill Paxton) needs to do all he can to convince his child/children that he can be trusted and has his/their best interest in mind when doing what he’s doing, as vile or horrible as it may seem. I wanted the reader to sympathize with him. Root for him. Help him rid the world of evil, because that’s what any of us would do…right? At least until the end. lol
3. Which Things? When Shaun realizes that only he sees those things, does he question his sanity? Do you intend for viewers to question Sean’s sanity? Should viewers question the “reality” of what they see onscreen? Perhaps with reference to your cover image (scroll back up), how do you imagine those things will look onscreen? Would they need to be shot from Shaun’s perspective? How does Shaun’s son, Jack, react when Shaun sees them?
ME: 100% lol, as the story unfolds my real hope was that the reader wouldn’t catch all the little clues along the way, but once the final payoff happens and the twist ending hits that it has the reader wanting to go back and see where they may have missed something vital to the payoff. The fact that people may be something other than human is kind of a crazy notion, so I’m thinking readers should question it and Shaun, but my hope is that the clues are subtle enough not to ruin the big mind fuck at the end. The cover art was a snapshot of what I envisioned. Actually, the idea for this story has been in my brain for years, and it took time to come out, but when it comes to the look of “Those Things,” it took a visit to a museum in Italy a few years back to cement it for me. There was a statue there that had deteriorated quite a bit over time, and it looked like a virus had started to take over. The deterioration started from the neck of the statue and stretched to the mouth. It looked vile. Terrifying, actually. I took a picture of it because I was fascinated by it. I pictured exactly that in the eyes of Shaun. They looked human but like a symbiote virus was taking over. In that darkness was razor sharp teeth and black eyes that glowed in the dark. I pictured it being something truly terrifying and hoped to have written that way so that the readers follow along for the ride. Jack, on the other hand, doesn’t see the same thing, or does he? Does his love for his father blind him to a certain extent? Much like Frailty, I believe it’s the love the children have for their father that plays a larger role in all of this. I wanted the same thing for my story.
4. Corporate Horror. “Team Bonding” seems to belong to an area in which I think you and I are among the few to have written—I’ll call it corporate horror. Do you think there’s something intrinsically scary about corporate cultures and corporate settings, such as the “retreat?” Why or why not? How about team bonding itself—do you find anything disturbing about the corporate bonding mentality? Do you aim for “Team Bonding” to satirize that mentality by calling attention to it? Why or why not?
ME: Love it. I think it’s an untouched type of horror that has only seen a few instances of great use (Severance, Mayhem to name a couple [I have to offer Cindy Sherman’s Office Killer as a neglected classic–LAC]). The corporate world is filled with examples of pure horror. Personally, I have been part of that world for the better part of almost 30 years, and I draw so much from my experiences in my writing. I really wanted to find a fun way to incorporate this backdrop into a horror story, and I think I captured that. I wanted it to start out lighthearted, with a simple story of employees being taken on a work retreat to find a way to bond as a team, and, without giving away the ending, I think I captured that in a way that hasn’t been overplayed. The corporate world is made of individuals from all walks of life, and I feel like you don’t truly know your co-workers until given a setting for that to come flying out. I feel like I was able to highlight that with the charter bus being the main set piece. Also doesn’t hurt to reduce costs of production, hahaha, since my ultimate goal is to get these made.
5. Bonding Characters. In our correspondence, you mentioned that you wrote an ensemble of characters that should be very attractive to actors looking for juicy parts. Without giving away too much, could you provide some examples of the characters and their disturbing pasts? What methods do you use for characterization, and how do you work their pasts into the story (and flow of the script)?
ME: For sure. I wanted each character in this story to have their own background. Their own point of view and ultimately their own skeletons since everyone has them (maybe not as dark as these but you never know!). Knowing this was a short, I didn’t have a ton of time (or pages) to go deeper into their back stories, but I felt like I was able to capture these with the limited real estate given before it becomes a feature. I always had a plan for the types of characters I wanted to have in this story, but once I started writing it, I felt the characters start coming out. I needed them to be somewhat relatable for the reader but maybe have a few on the extreme side as we all work with people who are at the opposite end that we are lol. I try really hard to make sure that all my characters in any script I write aren’t just toss away bits. I want readers to remember them.
6. Comic Rivalry. Okay, so I see potential for humor in both Those Things and “Team Bonding”—tell me if I’m way off base—but I really can’t imagine the Diva vs. Crooner scenario in “All I want for Christmas” not being funny, at least at first. How often does comedy make its way into your horror writing? How important is it in “All I want for Christmas?” Again, I sense satire… do you see yourself making fun of holiday celebrity culture, social media wars, cancel culture, and so on? Why or why not?
ME: I find a great deal of humor in horror. Life is terrifying, but we find fun ways to make it less. I try to incorporate humor in all of my horror scripts. It’s my way of dropping the guard of the reader before hitting them with true terror. A great example of that was in Eli Roth’s Hostel. The film starts out with jokes and nudity, so the viewers get comfy as this is a trope they are comfortable with. Then he hits you across the face with a barbed wire baseball bat (figuratively). I love that. Catch the reader/viewer off guard. When I first started entering into horror script comps the feedback I was getting was: “it’s too funny to be horror!” I was very put off by those comments because I feel like, if done properly, you have a recipe for success. With my latest, “All I Want for Christmas is…YOU!,” I just couldn’t miss the chance of writing the story we all wanted to see/read… or at least I did, hahaha. We deal with it each and every year. Halloween is over, and the stores are full of Christmas stuff. The stores have barely removed the orange and black decorations, and the place is dripping in red and green (and I’m not talking Freddy Krueger!). Then there’s the music. Ugh. Bing Crosby, Nat King Cole, Burl Ives, and that brings me to the Diva & the Crooner. Lol. Both amazingly talented and EVERYWHERE! BUT…what if they hated each other? What if they resented each other’s successes? Better yet…what if they both weren’t what we all think they are? That’s where I revel. It was too good a story to pass on… so I wrote it. Heavily inspired by the two juggernauts of Christmas Music success. I figured, why not make fun of the power of social media? Cancel culture has become quite a movement. Why not play off of that? It really helped my story find a home that makes sense to all readers. It was a ton of fun.
7. Christmas Horror 1. You’ve written another Christmas holiday short, “Bah Humbug,” and one of the first things I learned about you is that you do Christmas horror. What’s the attraction? Are you a fan of other Christmas horror films, such as Black Christmas (1974, preferably), Silent Night, Deadly Night (1984), I’m Dreaming of a White Doomsday (2017), et al.? The very first Gothic novel was published at Christmas, 1764, and Christmas has been a time for horror stories ever since. Why do you think Christmas is a time for horror?
ME: I realize that Christmas isn’t always a fun time for people. For a holiday so draped in family, religion, happy songs and gift giving. For some, Christmas isn’t fun at all. It’s misery. This is where my stories come from. I like the thought of taking a holiday that’s supposed to be fun and make it not so. “Bah Humbug” was my first real writing success. It got so much attention early on with Coverfly. Making The Red List, as well as winning quite a few competitions. It was a fun story to write, and I truly love that it’s found its audience. I honestly didn’t think I’d go back to another Christmas script. Been there, done that. But as I said above…it was just too good not to write. Lol.
8. Christmas Horror 2. A lot of people would probably agree that awkward gatherings over holiday dinners are a “horror” feature of the Christmas season, and a holiday dinner is where your characters in “All I want for Christmas” end up colliding. In what ways, if at all, is the eruption of horror at your script’s holiday dinner a reflection on the horror of more realistic holiday dinners? Even though events center on celebrities, will more average viewers relate to events, or are they more likely to see what happens as something occurring in the stratosphere (of the rich and famous or… whatever)?
ME: Holiday dinners are pure horror hahaha. Stuck around the table being forced to listen to your grandfather’s old racist jokes or hang out with cousins you barely know but are somewhat close in age. Agonizing hahahaha. I think this story has something for everyone but I think it answers the age-old question for everyone. YES, celebrities also sit down for holiday dinners. Maybe the spread is a bit better lol, but they still do it. The same as the rest of us. I wanted the meeting to center around this because no matter the social status, we all gotta’ eat! I felt it was the perfect set-up for the battle to play out.
9. Access! How can readers learn more about you and your works (please provide any links you want to share)?
ME: Readers can find me on Instagram, username: bahhumbugguy
They can also find me (and my work) on Coverfly, ISA & FilmFreeway, profile: Mike Ede
You can also find a bunch of my published work by going to Amazon and searching Michael K Ede and many of my scripts are there for purchase. Please follow my page or socials for updates on any new work being published. I also find time to attend festivals in Canada and the US (for now) so check my social media for appearances.
Thank you so much.
About the Screenwriter
Mike doesn’t just love watching movies…he writes them!
“There’s no better feeling to be sitting in a movie theatre and hear someone say: Whoever wrote this…is a genius. I love hearing a writer get their props for a job well done.” -Mike Ede
Mike (like many others) took the isolation of Covid-19 to self-reflect. It was during this time he decided to turn his dream of screenwriting into a reality. With only 3 years under his belt and a brain that won’t stop churning out great ideas, he has written over a dozen scripts to date (spanning genres like Horror, Comedy, Sci-Fi, Fantasy, Thriller and even a TV Pilot). Mike spent the first couple of years fine tuning his craft through online writing courses, reading any script he could get his hands on and taking the time to re-write and re-write his own scripts. He dug in and buried himself in his writing. After putting in the work he started seeing the fruits of his labour as his scripts began being chosen, selected and awarded in contests and festivals around the world.
His latest script “All I want for Christmas is…YOU!” has been taking the festival world by storm. You can grab a copy of this and many of this writer’s other works by heading over to Amazon and searching Michael K Ede. You won’t regret it.