From Freddy to Fine Art, How Whit Hertford Uses Creativity to Heal

What happens when horror, art, and real-life trauma all collide?

In this episode, we sit down with Whit Hertford, known to horror fans as Jacob from A Nightmare on Elm Street 5 and to movie lovers as the kid who gets shocked in Jurassic Park. But this conversation goes way beyond film credits.

Whit opens up about losing his father at age 10 and how creativity became his way of processing grief, long before he had the language for it. From acting and writing to abstract painting and even cooking, he shares how art has served as a constant, grounding force through life’s hardest moments.

We also dive into:

•  His experiences as a child actor in the horror world 
•  Why horror fans and conventions feel like true community 
•  The surprising healing power of abstract art 
•  His current creative work, including a dark, surreal film project inspired by Eraserhead
•  Shakespeare, storytelling, and why deeper meaning evolves with age 

This is one of those conversations that starts with horror, but quickly becomes something much bigger, about identity, loss, creativity, and finding your way forward.

If you’ve ever used movies, art, or storytelling to cope with something difficult, this episode will hit home.

Because at the end of the day… is horror good for mental wellness?

Of corpse it is.

Thank you for listening to Horror Heals. 

Share the show with someone who loves horror and someone who needs a little healing.

If you want to support our guests, check the show notes for links to their work, conventions, and fundraising pages.

You can also listen to our sister podcast Family Twist, a show about DNA surprises, identity, and the families we find along the way.

Horror Heals is produced by How the Cow Ate the Cabbage LLC.

Is horror good for mental wellness? Of corpse it is.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Today's episode feels like one of those conversations where everything kind of connects in ways you don't expect. We're talking with Wit Hertford, who a lot of you will recognize from a nightmare on Elm Street 5 and Jurassic Park. But what really struck me is how much of his life has been shaped by art in all its forms. We get into painting, writing, acting, even cooking, and how those creative outlets became something more than just expression. For Witt, they've been a place to go when life gets difficult, a way to process grief, stress, and everything in between. And honestly, it lines up so closely with what we talk about on this show all the time, that horror and creativity can both be spaces where healing actually happens. There's also a moment early on where he and I realize we share something pretty heavy, losing a parent at a young age. And you can hear how that kind of experience shapes the way someone sees the world and how they create within it. This is one of those episodes that starts with horror but goes a lot deeper into what it means to create, to cope, and to keep going. Here's our conversation with Wit.

Corey 1:10

Our theme is about horror being good for mental wellness, but I've also always appreciated the fact that art is so good for mental wellness as well. Can you start off talking just a little bit about how the different types of arts have been helpful in just your own mental capacity?

SPEAKER_02 1:29

I mean within the last seven, eight years. If it's a hard day at work, if there's a thing with a relationship, if there's a thing in the world or news that to pull away and to take myself to a place of creation, which sounds kind of hoagy, but it's true. Whether it's me being here at the laptop and writing on a script I'm working on or uh painting, I have a bunch of my abstracts around the house. Abstract painting is a thing that I didn't ever do until about three and a half years ago. And my sister, my two younger sisters, and the one closest to me in age, has two visual arts degrees. I was doing this one play that I wrote that was uh kind of this really strange abstract meditation on Oedipus and Antigone, father-daughter relationship. And I was really happy with it, excited about it, but it was a lot of work. I mean, I was playing Oedipus, so I was blind and not really talking for 75 minutes whilst like half naked, bloody, and wailing and crying. It was a big acting exercise, and I did not anticipate playing that role. The actress was like, I couldn't find a 65-year-old actor to play this role in LA, and so she was like, You have enough gray in your beard that you could play my dad. I was like, How dare you? Anyway, so we're in rehearsals, and I was just like, I feel like as a cast and as a group, we should just paint one rehearsal. And so I asked my sister about it, and I was like, I've never I've never really put acrylics or oils to a canvas. How do you do that? And she gave me some cool like just like basic basic steps, and I I was off and running, and I really loved it, and it kind of came out of me in a very organic way, and that was that to use you know the wording your title was really healing. She found out I was selling these, and that galleries and collectors were at inquiring about my paintings, and she wasn't too happy about that. Um she did talk to me for about two or three weeks. She was just like, Who do you think you are? That just like your first three paintings you can start selling for who do you think you are? She's right, but I am rather ambitious that way. So, again, whether it's the painting, whether it's the writing, I'm also one of my many survival gigs I've done over Diet Masseus chef, and so I really like cooking, and I think there's a lot of artistry within that. I take it really seriously. I like the presentation of food, I like the mini selection, I like the flavor profiles, I like all of the creation. When I was really little, when I had a really traumatic thing to kind of set everything in my life on course when I was 10, I went to my drums and I beat the hell out of my drums, which is a form of artistry, or I would draw, or I'd watch a movie. And yeah, it's a thing that like whenever I meet somebody that's like, I don't feel very artistic, I don't feel very creative. I'm like, what are you talking about? I'm like, there's art in everything we do. Like you wake up and you pick two socks you're gonna wear, either they match or they don't match. That's an artistic decision.

Corey 5:25

That's a cool perspective to have. And yeah, I'm right there with you with the cooking. My grandmother taught me to bake when I was like five years old, and cooking for friends and family is one of my favorite things. And I tinkered around with the idea of opening a St. Louis themed restaurant in Oakland, California, because St. Louis has some certain dishes that are only in St. Louis, but I don't think I would be fulfilled trying to do that as a career. It brings me joy to cook for people that I love. It's a very dangerous thing.

SPEAKER_02 5:55

I was told this uh growing up. It was like pick the thing that you want to make money at as the thing that like isn't your special space. Right. Because you'll grow to hate it. Yeah. I don't know if everybody has the option to do that, but I certainly have tried to do that, where the things that are special to me, I don't really like try to overly monetize them or make them too stressy. The paintings for me, it's like if somebody wants to buy one, they can buy one. But I'm in no ways like I don't I think I've done one show over the last three years, and I don't really market myself. It's very private, and I think that as long as I can keep that way, and same with my scripts, like I I've never been published, I've been produced many, many times, but my plays have never been published. Maybe that's something I would do in the future, but for me, it's like they're my kids, they're my creations, they're very sacred to me. And maybe I'm being a little holier than thou and self-righteous about it. But for me, it I'm not on the streets yet, so I'm still able to pay the bills.

SPEAKER_00 7:07

You have to have passions, and I not my mother, my adopted mother's child, obviously, but she was a fantastic painter. And one of the things that I love about my formative years is that she and I took painting classes together, and that was just it was such a touch point for me, for my life, and I was never half as good as she ever could be, but it just meant so much to go through that with her, and then she became ill and died, and she died when I was 10, which made me when you said oh wow, when you said that something happened in your life when you were 10, it it brought that back to me because that's when I lost her. Yeah, we're the club, buddy. I had it was my dad. My dad passed away when I was 10. My mother died when I was 10, and my dad when I was 16. Holy smokes, yeah. And then 30 years later, I found my biological family on both sides. So yeah, he's the oldest of seven.

SPEAKER_02 8:15

Oh my goodness. Here's one of the paintings here. I'll show you. Here's one of my guys right now.

Corey 8:20

I love it. I love abstract art, and I love that you use the inspiration from your past work to to inform your art.

SPEAKER_02 8:30

Sometimes, yeah, sometimes I do that. That's probably me because I like the fans and I like the fan interaction. So yeah, I'll do that once in a while.

Corey 8:39

Would you be open to having prints made and bringing them to cons? Because I think the fans would really appreciate that.

SPEAKER_02 8:47

Yeah, I think so. I mean, I've even brought little 11 by 14 canvases and kind of sold those off. They're a little more pricey, you know, they're not going to be like the$60 a photo would be, but they're not outrageous, especially for you know fine art. I know that uh a couple of my nightmare core cohorts sell a lot of their own sort of swag outside of the pictures, and it does really well.

Corey 9:14

We had Adrian King on the show, and she paints images of Alice in the rowboat. Oh wow.

SPEAKER_00 9:21

They're really cool.

Corey 9:22

And she even and then her paintings, like she had a line of lines that she used the paintings on the labels. Oh wow. Yeah. So when you're at a con, how quickly can you who's a Jurassic fan and who's a Nightmare Null Street fan?

SPEAKER_02 9:35

Pretty quickly. Yeah. Especially if they're wearing the shirt. But if they're not wearing the shirt, some of the tips are you know, the age range. Horror fans are they're their own breed. Yeah. And there's an energy that is unmistakable. But yeah, that's a funny question. I've thought about that before because I've been at the table and been sitting next to another actor, and I'm like, I bet it's this. And I'm like, always right. Always right. Yeah. Yeah.

Corey 10:07

I'm gonna WhatsApp our cousin Sean after this because Jurassic Park is one of his favorite flick, if not his favorite flick of all time. I'm like, guess who we just talked to? Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 10:18

Hey man, it's pretty wild. I was very uh maybe a little shy, maybe a little pretentious about doing conventions. So I I kind of jumped on it a little bit late in the game. Now they're like even more saturated because I think the economy and the pandemic made everyone that's been on any TV show or film ever in the history of forever. They were like, Oh, we can go to a con and that can be a good business idea. When it used to just be horror and genre specific, yeah, now it's like come meet the guys from Big Bang. It's okay.

Corey 10:54

Yes. Like uh no offense, but okay. Yeah, the Monster Mania convention I was at, I was like, so John Lovitz from Saturday Night Live. That's not borer.

SPEAKER_02 11:05

No, there's enough to go around, but you know, I'm probably just not even that good at it. Like I have a nightmare cohort where it's not Lisa. Lisa's very good at it, but I have another nightmare cohort who it's like her whole gig, and she's very she's very smart about it. She networks like crazy, and she it's a 24-7 thing for her. I don't really view it that way. I like it as a special thing. Would I love to go to more? Yeah, yeah. I you know, I'd love to go to one a month or one every two months.

SPEAKER_00 11:39

Yeah, it's ebbs and flows. That also needs to be a passion, though. You know what I mean? If you don't enjoy it that much, then yeah, I think that's what bums me out.

SPEAKER_02 11:47

When I first started doing it, and I would go and I would see actors, usually they're a little older, and they would be like assholes. And they would be looking down, they wouldn't interact with the and I'm like, that looks so poorly on the rest of us. And I'm like, if you don't want, get out of here, man. Yeah, you don't want to meet your fans. I have to be here. Yeah, absolutely. And every fan that I've met, every con that I've gone to, the fans are the greatest. And really, like, even the people that work it, there's only been one promoter out of maybe 25, 30 conventions that was a little sketch.

Corey 12:30

I just think the community, and it runs the gamut of demographics and stuff. You've got babies dressed up as Pennywise the Clown and Grandma in the wheelchair, can't wait to meet Robert England. Yeah, everybody fits in. It doesn't matter who you are, you can start a conversation with anybody. But I love that. And I think 90 plus percent of the celebrities that attend, I think they get that to see like Matthew Lillard stay an extra two and a half hours because he wants to make sure everybody in line gets to meet him and everybody gets a hug, and people like like Gen Z like scream is their nightmare on Elf Street, like for me. So like when they get to meet those folks, it's like they just can't believe it.

SPEAKER_02 13:08

Matthew is an incredibly nice person.

Corey 13:11

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 13:12

Like I'm almost kind of jealous of him because I'm like, I'm sure people have other words they use for when they meet me, like intense or like creepy. I wish I to be the to be the nice guy is like, I'm so jealous. I wish I was the nice guy.

Corey 13:29

Well, you're very charming, so I think that hopefully that comes across ethical. Yeah, it's just and I love and people do complain about it, and I don't know if you've heard this, but Robert England will spend 10-15 minutes per a sharing story. I don't know how he has the same.

SPEAKER_02 13:44

I don't know how he does it, but it's because I think he's doing probably 12 a year.

unknown 13:49

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 13:50

That was the thing, is like I had started doing these conventions and reconnected with these nightmare, specifically part five people, that when I was 10, you know, they were 18, 19, 20, maybe in their maybe early 20s, but like they were so cool and I wanted to hang out with them, but I was 10. Like they they wouldn't let me hang out with them. And I remember I got in uh like a shuttle van with Danny Hassel and Lisa and Beatrice Betbull and Erica Anderson, and I believe Joe was there as well. Anyway, and Erica was sitting with me in the back, and I had such a crush on her when I was like 10-11. Because she's just she's just like the best. And I looked at her and I was like, you know what? It was like really quiet the van. I went, it's so cool that my mom's not here.

SPEAKER_03 14:54

It's a great pickup.

SPEAKER_02 14:56

I love that. Because I like the last time mom was in the way, you know what I mean?

Corey 15:03

Yeah. Did you get to watch any of the nightmares when you were making it? So just to give you an idea of what was happening.

SPEAKER_02 15:10

My mom was a really good manager, she's an actress herself. I threw a little shade, so now I guess my I'm trying to like now glaze her a little bit. Give some love to mom. All love to mom. So she was really good at like getting me prepared, helping me with lines. I've never been great at memorizing lines, just never been great at it. And so it takes me extra long to figure it out. And I lost my train of thought. That's okay. That's okay. No worries. Sorry, no, I this is why I was thinking about why I can't memorize lines. Oh, because I get distracted, and then I got distracted.

Corey 15:45

I know, and I think I just got distracted too, and I can't remember what I asked. What did you think of the throwback Super Bowl Jurassic commercial where they de-aged the cast?

SPEAKER_02 15:56

It's great. I just, it's like the amount of times at conventions that people are asking why I'm not in the Jurassic World films is like numerous, happens all the time. And so I'd love to. I would do any little cameo, I would do whatever. But uh it's fun, it's fun that there's a resurgence, it's just come on through this new discovery and with the new trilogy and batch of movies, and I did a like a mock YouTube video for some really famous that king or something. He did a huge recreation of Jurassic Park, but with uh dogs or cats or something, and uh so he had me recreate, and they got a shirt that looked exactly like my shirt and from the film. It was fun to kind of redo that. I've been asked for years to do some sort of recreation sketch or whatever. When I was doing a lot of improv and sketch with UCB 10, 12 years ago, a lot of the times the comedians would like want to do some sort of video, and I just never felt that it was right. But when this guy, this content creator, asked me to do it, he I was like, Yeah, that seems like that'd be fun. So let's do that.

Corey 17:17

Nice. I love that you bring up UCB because one of the best days of my life was I wrote a book called The Union of the State, which was an oral history of the comedy tree of the state, and we did this a state reunion at UCB in LA, and that was amazing.

SPEAKER_02 17:36

Yeah, very cool.

Corey 17:37

Yeah. Now I remember what we were talking about before when we both got off track. Your mom was a great manager, she let you watch the Nightmare on Elm Street movies.

SPEAKER_02 17:45

Yeah, so she prepped me, she had me watch. I think I watched Nightmar three and nightmares four.

unknown 17:51

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 17:52

Don't think I watched one and two. Probably for the later.

Corey 17:56

Because those are the ones very interesting. They're better.

SPEAKER_02 17:59

Yeah, yeah, it's great. That's the funny thing, is like five is is such the polarizing one of the canon. Like you love it or you hate it. Yeah, I've never really understood why, but yeah. I love it. I think it's great. It's got a lot of really good social commentary. I think Robert is in like really silly form, just like campy as hell. I hadn't seen him since then. And I did a convention in I want to say Pennsylvania, and he was there. He's the only one that he was booked on with the rest of us. Because we usually travel as like a game. Yeah. But he's always separate, he doesn't really need us. He can have my butt, yeah, and so for him and I to reconnect after all these years, I think he was kind of freaked out. Like he loved it, and he was like, Look at you with all your tattoos and so rock and roll. And I started talking to him about Shakespeare, his eyes got huge, and we started talking about Richard III and Hamlet and things that I'm very interested in. I asked him to come play Claudio last year, or sorry, Claudius and Hamlet. I thought that would be amazing if we could play Father Son again. Yeah. And he had a schedule conflict or something like that. But I am determined to get him in. I'm writing a screenplay right now that is a total original screenplay. I directed two short films last year that were kind of my first after you know years and years of directing theater and starting a directing group in London. I was going to grad school. I had never really taken that ethos and sort of the process of how I create into the film world because I was just kind of there, you know, that was the job. And then in my 20s, I did dabble with a little bit of independent film, but it was always with an another friend or two. So it never really felt like my vision, like the theater work had. So it was really important for me to see if I could do that. So we did two shorts this last year, and I'm really happy with both of them. They're both in the festival circuit. And then uh, and then I wrote this now I really would love Robert to do. I'm scared to say too much because I usually am so loose-lipped. Essentially, it's like my version of uh Eraserhead. Oh, all right, all right. Okay, I mean, fuck it. I'll just say it. Maybe there's a producer that out is out there that wants to say somebody, right? I'd just shoot it out to you. It's called Deathbed, and it's about a black metal musician. I'm gonna play him, you know, long hair, beard, so I'm growing the beard, and like caked Norwegian death metal makeup. And he finds out he's got two weeks to live, and so all the death and macabre is like his aesthetic that has defined him and that it is his world, he's not very scared of. And so it's this death metal musician that has to come to peace with dying. Wow, it's also a queer story that's sort of the the B storyline that kind of came out of nowhere and and is is I think something I'm really excited about. I'm writing and and having it be part of this story. But yeah, I want to shoot it in all black and white. That's why I say erase her head. And uh, so if there's somebody that's watching this that wants to help out, come find me.

Corey 21:54

I'm gonna put it out in the universe that Rob Halford listens to this episode.

SPEAKER_02 22:00

I mean, totally. I watched a documentary. This idea came from not only my love of David Lynch and Anna Razor had that particular movie, but two things. I was watching a documentary about a really scary death metal lead singer from like the 80s. And he's truly satanic and truly an intimidating force. And out of the closet, like years after his band was famous. And I think Rob Halford's handled it normal. This was like a shock. Because this guy was like, it'd be like all of a sudden, if you know, some I don't know. I don't know what a good parallel would be, but it was such a pivot, and it made the study of him as a person so much more interesting to me. I was thinking about because here in LA, after the pandemic, the sketch and improv circuit kind of changed. UCB wasn't owned by the same people anymore, and it kind of went a little corporate. And yeah, it just sort of fizzled during the pandemic. And so people started doing podcasts. People started doing, you know, YouTube channels. And that's where you get a lot of this boom in content creation, was because out of necessity, people just started doing that. And what sprung out at that time was this sort of underground clown movement here in LA. There's a theater here called The Elesion, and it's sort of the new hog, like cool kid factory, and they do a lot of clown work. Like their emphasis is primarily that. I love the idea of a sad clown. I really do. And I've always wanted to play that in a certain longer format. And I thought, well, if you had a death metal guy that was a clown, that was a sad clown, that would be so new and interesting. And it would follow all the same rules of what clown history is and any of the Comedia del Arte stuff, but you have this image that you wouldn't expect to evoke pathos and emotion. And so that's the idea with this film. Anyway, that's my little pet project.

unknown 24:26

Pretty cool.

SPEAKER_02 24:27

That sounds amazing.

Corey 24:28

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 24:29

We're gonna put it out to the universe.

Corey 24:31

Please do. Yeah. Oh my goodness. Wow. What memories do you have from the nightmare days? Aside from flirting with the actress.

SPEAKER_02 24:45

Remember the audition? I remember that I I think I only auditioned once or twice. I got it pretty quickly. The original School's Out Kruger was fuck you, Kruger. I grew up in a very religious. My mom, when they were trying to book me, she said he'll do it if you change that line. Which is annoying that she stepped in with religion, but school's out Kruger is a much better line. I'm happy with that. It's more iconic than fuck you, Kruger. Yeah. What else? I was always wigged out that my wardrobe, which was progressively dirtier and more fucked up hospital gown. Yeah. Always in my trailer, I was to wear matching underwear. So the underwear would also be dyed and stained and gross. It's very counterintuitive to put on dirty underwear. Yes. You know what I mean? Yeah. And so for that final scene, I remember the under the wear they wanted me to wear, and it was like it had been dragged through an out like an anti-gump, and it was just like it was dirt, but it looked it and it was just like skeeving me out. So I didn't wear, I wore my underwear or whatever was the they had another fresh pair there. So if you look in the film, there's a shot where Alice picks me up off the stairs in the final showdown, and I'm wearing bright white underwear. So it's funny to me because I'm like, oh yeah, that's obviously why they would have me do that because it stands out. But oh and back in the day, nobody caught it to do any like CGI or so. It's funny how we pick up on those little things.

Corey 26:43

Like, we see like, how did they how did nobody catch this?

SPEAKER_02 26:46

I remember when I first met Robert, it was on set, he was shooting the Greta scene, they brought me down when she's being forced fed, and uh and yeah, and I stood behind all of the action, and they when they yelled cut, one of the ADs whispered to Robert and he turned his head and he looked straight at me and he walked towards me, and he never broke a character. I never knew Robert until the rap party, and then he was he introduced himself to me, but I only knew him as Freddie, which again, this is why Robert England is not just a genre actor, he's an actor, he's a very fine actor. Yes, because that decision to go like, I need to make sure that this kid is kind of scary. It'd probably be something that people would take umbrage with now and call it like some sort of like method acting, but I don't know, man. I think that stuff is all bullshit, and I think good actors get really invested. Yeah, and he probably thought I'm gonna get a better performance out of this kid because I had no idea who he was. Alice and Danny, or Lisa and Danny were very cool with me. I didn't talk to them all that much. I was I was alone on that sheet. It was like me and Steve Hopkins, the director, and what was really cool is I remember so my tragedy with my dad happened six months before I shot that.

SPEAKER_03 28:15

Oh gosh.

SPEAKER_02 28:16

I think my mom was really smart to keep us busy. And for me, again, here we go, full circle. The healing upset, whilst I was going through that tragedy, helped me to feel purpose and community and hopeful. And I still was a kid and went to therapy for it a little bit. I don't think I had great therapists because I all I remember is that he would I'd come to his office, and my mom would leave, and then he'd be like, How are you doing? Do you want to go over to Denny's? And we would just walk over to Denny's and eat food.

unknown 28:57

Oh, okay.

SPEAKER_02 28:59

And so, like, I my mom was paying for him to just like have all the moons over my hand, and he was what a beautiful distraction, though, from what you were going through. Yeah.

Corey 29:12

Yeah. Wow.

SPEAKER_02 29:13

And I the thing about Steve Hopkins that I thought was really cool, my birthday. So my dad dies in May, and we're shooting around Halloween, November, because my birthday is November 2nd. And I remember that he gave me a skateboard as a birthday gift, and I was big in a skateboarding. It was like a really cool, and uh, I thought that was so thoughtful, and you know, I was the only kid on that set, so they treated me really well, and and I also was like very curious. I mean, we shot that thing in what felt like six airplane hangars. I'm sure they were just warehouses, but to me they were they were giant, and uh, I would get lost all the time, they would have to come and find me all the time, and especially that last sequence with all the piping and all the different levels. Yeah, I would have my Freddy makeup on in my little hospital dirty hospital gown, and they would give me some van slipons to wear so I didn't step on anything, and I would be gone, and they would have to, the studio teacher would have to find me.

Corey 30:26

Now, I have a gut reaction answer to the question I'm about to ask, and I think it's because you straddle a lie between fine and practical arts, but how do you think you didn't fall into the trappings of a child actor? Who's to say I didn't?

SPEAKER_02 30:42

You came out on the other side. You mean because I don't have a heroin addiction? Right, yes, yeah, yeah. The religion thing kept me scared and sheltered. I was really afraid to like even swear for a large part of my life, and then I think you know it's interesting. I people have asked that question before, but uh, I'm having a new sort of take on it today because I'm realizing that I think when I left to go to college, which there were two big moments in high school when I was like a junior or senior. I had done probably from the ages of eight or nine to like 15, I had a good run. And I just finished a movie with Karen Colkin and Charles Brilliant, which was a sequel to a Christmas story that nobody asked for called My Summer Story. And it was a great cast, not a great movie, but Karen was so great to hang out with, and he didn't want to hang out with the kids that were his age, he wanted to hang out with me, and I was like five years older. And he's obviously turned into this award-winning actor, and you always knew that he was the guy, and I had finished that film, and I was like, I don't think I want to audition anymore. And I told my mom, I was like, I think I just want to go to high school and play basketball and make out with girls and be a teenager, and she's like, Okay, she didn't push me at all, which was like pretty cool of her. And then maybe a year and a half later, when I was deciding about on like if I wanted to go to college, my best friend was going to a college out of state, and I just didn't really have any aspirations. I knew that college sounded kind of fun, but I didn't really have any desire what I wanted to do. There were little seeds of me that was like doing some deep dives in film and watching Taxi Driver and and Pulp Fiction and Fargo was like my favorite movie in my senior year. Still one of my top five favorite movies. So I was really getting into film, but I didn't really I don't know, I just didn't have the the nerve, I guess, to go to somewhere like NYU or USC or try to do that. So instead, I just went to this school out of state that had a really nice theater program because I was like, I'd done some plays, some musicals as a kid, and I got in, and it was just kind of this lucky little undergraduate program that was created by this Juilliard teacher, educator named Ken Washington, and it was in the mountains of Utah, and it was like this nationally ranked BFA program at the time that people were turning down East Coast schools to come and study, and so I just lucked into being part of that era, and I think having theater and having some sort of direction and I don't like disappointing people, and you know, I brought up my family a lot on this podcast. I think because of that tragedy early in my life, even though I have probably some pretty dark wiring, I don't want to inflict that kind of pain on anybody else. So I think to answer your question, why have I not taken certain roads? Probably that I've had sort of an idea of what I want to do in my life, and removing myself from Hollywood, going to just a weird school in Utah was I think really helpful because everybody else that I auditioned with from the ages of nine to 15 were Elijah Wood, Seth Green, Toby Maguire, Giovanni Rubisi, Young, Growing Pains DiCaprio, and all of them got super duper famous. And I did not. Would I have if I stayed? Maybe not. But I've always felt like a 50-year-old in my body. I've always felt in my mind and my body that I was 50 years old, even when I was 20. So I've I'm in no rush. And now that I'm getting closer to that age, which is crazy, it feels like everything is sort of coalescing and a lot of hard, hard work and a lot of just like sticking it out, keeping yourself able to pay your bills and a roof over your head while still being creatively, hopefully, creatively and hopefully reinventing myself and still putting out what I, you know, because I'm the hardest on myself. I don't give a script to a producer or an actor or a director of photography if if I don't think it's great. I purposely have a checks and balance system in my friend group that will tell me if my shit stinks and if it's the wrong move, if it's not my best work, they will tell me. And I think it's imperative to have that. I think it's important, and I think that's also what's kept me still curious, really curious, in so much that I take a painting in my 40s. Not everybody does that. That's a very normal way of answering your question, my friend. But that was good. But I'll tell you what, man. I did play catch-up for a while, and there was the Mormon kid in me who didn't really get to have a Romspringer, didn't really get to have a moment to figure out who he was as a teenager in his 20s. I made I was like 10 years off. I made up for that in my 30s and early 40s. So now we're scaling it way back.

Corey 37:04

All right. Well, let me put uh a bug in your ear, Witt, and I don't want to distract you completely from your eraserhead-esque project, but when you mentioned Shakespeare, um I got I got really back into Shakespeare when Shakespeare and Love came out in the late 90s and went back and reread a lot of stuff. I really got into the sonnets, and there is a lot of dark horror stuff in Shakespeare's writing. There's ghosts and all the murder and all that stuff. I think you come up with a and they're all public public works now, so that you can adapt however you want. I think a screenplay of mashing up some Shakespeare stuff, that's your Robert English kit right there.

SPEAKER_02 37:44

That's how I get in?

Corey 37:46

Yes.

SPEAKER_02 37:47

Yeah. Maybe, yeah, maybe a movie, yeah. Yeah, because maybe that was the reason. Yeah, maybe that's kind of my calling card is adaptations. Yeah. When I was in London, I was kind of known as the guy that would take Chekhov and Shakespeare and the Greets and whatever, and that's kind of my calling card. I just finished adapting Hamlet five, six months ago. I'm really happy with that adaptation, but it is for the stage.

unknown 38:15

Yeah.

Corey 38:16

Hamlet's my absolute favorite of Shakespeare.

SPEAKER_02 38:19

I've been hanging out with that. I was telling her that she was like, Why do you love Shakespeare so much? I was like, pretty weird question to ask, but okay. Like, why do you love pizza? Like, why do you love pizza?

Corey 38:33

Exactly. What's not to love?

SPEAKER_02 38:36

Okay. It was a genuine question. I said, he's forever. It's timeless. There's so many layers that you'll never you're never gonna find like the final answer. Right, it's always gonna be revealed to you, right? And so again, I played kids and sidekicks and angsty 20-year-old hipster kids forever. And when the Oedipus idea came along, it was the first time that I was like, Oh, I'm playing a dad. And it felt right. And then right after that, Chekhov is a big inspiration. I studied in Moscow for a little bit. I love, love, love Chekhov. And I wanted to play Uncle Vanya. So I played Uncle Vanya last year ago, November, in downtown LA in Liz Loft with a great cast. And so you're playing a dad, you're playing an uncle. And so I was looking at Hamlet here and I was going, what is Hamlet as a 47-year-old? And I was like, Oh, it's so much more fucking interesting. If you got a Timmy Chalamet playing Hamlet, he hasn't lived any life. Your mom is gonna marry your uncle, your dad is dead, you're losing your mind, you don't all these existential questions, you're not old enough. It's gotta hurt a little bit more. So at a as a 47-year-old, you go, I this play is about him going for broke and going, I will set everything on fire if I don't get some answers. And as I was working on this adaptation, as I've had a couple readings, to say to be or not to be now, as opposed to when I was an undergrad when I was 23, 24, it's very different. It's a different way, so I'm excited about it. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, because when you're saying to be or not to be as a 24-year-old, you're immediately I think thinking of what hurts, right? It's present tense, and all acting should be present tense, but if you think about to be or not to be as a 47-year-old, you're thinking past, present, and future. Yeah, the epiphanies of I there's the rub is such a like core uh at a very visceral level, a very raw nerve-ending level, those things become much more rooted and honest, I think. Yeah.

Corey 41:23

No, as a 50-year-old just saying to be or not to be, you're talking about the end. This is it.

SPEAKER_02 41:32

A couple months ago, I was on a run and I went, oh, maybe it's not about do I live or do I die? Maybe he's asking to be or not to be as existence, like Baba Ramdas, higher consciousness, like what is it to exist? Not should I take my life or should I not? He gets to that, but maybe the initial kernel is what does it mean to fucking exist?

Corey 42:12

I didn't know we were gonna get so deep today.

SPEAKER_02 42:14

Hey, that's me, baby. That's the Scorpio boy.

Corey 42:19

So the last question that we always ask on this podcast is who is your favorite final person in a horror movie? The survivor. And we say person because we love the final girl, but we just say person.

SPEAKER_02 42:34

It's me, man.

Corey 42:35

Perfect, perfect.

SPEAKER_02 42:37

It's me, or it's Shelly Duvall?

SPEAKER_03 42:45

Oh.

Corey 42:47

In the shiny? That's the first time anybody has has given that one. Can you guess what the tops are? Totally. You've got the Scream Girls. Yeah, we've had enough. Naz. I mean, and my mom? Yeah, no, we have had that. Lori Strode and Heather Langenkamp. No, Shelly Duvall, man.

SPEAKER_02 43:12

I watched that film on 35 millimeter. And it's just like it's perfect, and she's perfect. And I know there's a lot of controversy with like how that role is achieved, and like she stood by it her whole life, and it's it's a perfect movie for a reason.

Corey 43:31

I kind of wonder because I I know it's controversy about Stephen King not liking the adaptation, but I wonder if there's just a tinge of jealousy there because it is such a good fucking movie.

SPEAKER_02 43:42

No, that's totally what it is. Like, objectively, any film Cinephile is this is an amazingly executed movie, script, performance, visuals, design, tone. It's immaculate. Yeah. So for him to not like it is a little bit like just being. Shitty because it's like misery's great, but is misery perfect? No. No, there's tons of dips in misery. And I love misery. Yeah, I don't know. Like you're giving me thoughts about me. I don't want to be arrogant about it, but like I don't know why there isn't a Reddit petition for there to be a streaming series called Sun Kruger. I don't know why that's not happening.

SPEAKER_03 44:25

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 44:26

We don't need to recrash Freddy. Like, open up, open up the world, right?

Corey 44:35

Stranger things have happened. Weird, creepy face. I wouldn't say creepy, but you definitely have very distinct eyes.

SPEAKER_02 44:42

Oh, thank you. Thank you.

Corey 44:45

This has been a total pleasure. Thank you for doing this. And I promise you that you're a piece of your art is going to be hanging on our walls sometime this year.

SPEAKER_02 44:53

Yeah, that was a very quick hour.

Corey 44:55

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 44:56

Thanks, guys. I appreciate it.

SPEAKER_00 44:58

That was one of those conversations where you can feel how much someone has lived and how much of that ends up in their work. Talking with Whit Hertford, what stayed with me is this idea that creativity isn't just something you do when you feel inspired. It's something you return to when things feel difficult. Whether it's painting, writing, acting, or just even cooking a meal, it becomes a place you can go when the world feels like a little too much. And that really is what we're always circling back to here. That horror, art, storytelling, all of it can give us a way to process what we're carrying. And hearing him talk about losing his dad at the same age I lost my mom, there's just an understanding there that doesn't need a lot of explanation. You find your ways to cope, and sometimes those end up shaping your entire life. Thanks again to Wit for being so open with us and for reminding us that healing doesn't always look the same, but it often comes from the things we create. Because at the end of the day, is horror good for mental wellness? Of course it is.