Joel Soisson and Peter Funt: Hollywood Legends Share Stories from Nightmare on Elm Street, Bill & Ted, and 75 Years of Candid Camera

Veteran filmmaker Joel Soisson and Candid Camera host Peter Funt join the show to share decades of entertainment history, from horror classics and cult comedies to television's longest-running hidden camera series. Soisson reflects on his remarkable 40-year career that began as a PA in the early 1980s, never experiencing the typical "Star Wars moment" that defined his generation. Instead, he drifted from art school into animation and eventually motion pictures, working every possible job on set. Though he originally dreamed of becoming a cinematographer, fate intervened when legendary producer Sandy Howard hired him to write a family film about a lost dog, launching his career as a writer, producer, and director. His journey became defined by horror films—not because he lived and breathed the genre, but because early successes made horror projects incredibly easy to greenlight, while his romantic comedy pitches faced much steeper odds.Soisson's involvement with A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy's Revenge came at a critical moment for New Line Cinema. While Wes Craven's original 1984 film became an instant cult classic that Soisson considers "nearly the perfect horror film," the sequel wasn't just another franchise opportunity—it was literally about saving Bob Shaye's fledgling studio from financial collapse after Craven had sold away all his profit participation just to get the first film made. What made the original Nightmare so psychologically brilliant, Soisson explains, was that unlike Jason or Michael Myers, you couldn't run away from Freddy Krueger because everyone has to sleep eventually. That relatable terror of fighting an unwinnable battle against exhaustion, combined with guilt and parental responsibility woven throughout, elevated it far beyond typical slasher fare. The story of Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure reveals Hollywood dealmaking at its most wonderfully absurd: after Italian producer Dino De Laurentiis (who called their previous film "Trick and Treat" because he didn't understand the phrase) signed Soisson to a five-picture deal, convincing him to greenlight a movie about California teenagers speaking in peculiar vernacular seemed impossible—until De Laurentiis noticed Napoleon appeared in the script, having produced a definitive Napoleon epic himself, and apparently misread "exterior, the world of San Dimas" as "the war of San Dimas."Peter Funt shares the remarkable 75-year history of Candid Camera, which holds the record as the only entertainment program to produce new episodes across eight different decades—a distinction shared only with NBC's Meet the Press. The show's origins trace back to a serendipitous World War II discovery when Funt's father Allen was stationed at an Oklahoma army base, recording soldiers' messages home on expensive acetate discs. After noticing soldiers performed better during rehearsals than when the recording light was on, Allen secretly disconnected the red light and captured their authentic, unrehearsed moments. This realization about hidden audio's power led to Candid Microphone on ABC Radio in 1947, becoming the very first program ever televised on what would become ABC television just one year later. The show retained the name Candid Microphone even on TV until moving to NBC in late 1949, when it was renamed Candid Camera—a far more memorable and alliterative choice that became embedded in American culture.Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-neil-haley-show--6503396/support.