‘The Last Podcast’ Director Dean Alioto On His Triumphant Return to The Horror Genre
Dean Alioto is a cult name in the horror world for creating one of the first early examples of found footage with his 1989 film The McPherson Tape. Directed when he was in his early 20s, Alioto has since had a lucrative career directing television episodes and feature films, just not within the horror genre. However, this year marks his glorious return to the genre with his new feature The Last Podcast, which had its world premiere at the 2024 FrightFest in London.
Read the full synopsis below:
The Last Podcast centers on ambitious podcast host Charlie Bailey (Eric Tabach) and his podcast ‘ParaNormalcy’, which makes fun of those who believe in ghosts. His girlfriend, Brie, (Kaikane), wishes he wasn’t so mean-spirited about debunking spirits, but all this changes when Charlie meets Duncan (Gabriel Rush), a junior professor of science. Duncan claims he can scientifically prove there’s no afterlife. When his experiment goes awry, Charlie’s life and career are turned upside down.
While his return to horror is a traditional narrative and not found footage, his experience with The McPherson Tape was Alioto’s main source of inspiration for The Last Podcast. More specifically, he was inspired by the types of podcasts he’s guested on to discuss his found footage phenomenon.
According to Alioto, there were two types of podcasts that he was invited to: podcasts hosted by fans of his movie and podcasts hosted by people who believed his film was actual proof of alien life.
“Literally, these are the ones who believed that the movie was real and that [The McPherson Tape] was an actual family being abducted by extraterrestrials,” he explained.
True Believers
Yes, there are groups of people who believed, and still do believe, that Alioto captured actual footage of extraterrestrials. That all started when someone got access to his film, cut off the credits, and leaked it into the UFO community.
“It ended up at the mothership of all UFO conventions, which is called the International UFO Congress, where [The McPherson Tape] was deemed authentic by a lieutenant colonel with 40 years of military intelligence experience,” Alioto said. “It’s a little scary that someone with [that] experience can’t discern between a movie and actual contact with mankind and aliens, but there you go.”
The tape made its way onto shows like Unsolved Mysteries, so Alioto ended up going on national TV to debunk his own film. “I might be the first filmmaker to ever do that, or the only one. So I kind of enjoyed it… It wasn’t my intention to hoax people.”
Alioto Gets The Podcasting Bug
Fast forward 25 years and as the film celebrates its 25th anniversary, Alioto was invited onto podcasts to discuss the new release from Vinegar Syndrome and how his found footage phenomenon shaped the genre forever. In fact, he guest-hosted Podcast UFO for a few episodes, which is where he really got the bug for the medium.
“I was encouraged by some of the listeners to start my own podcast. So I thought, alright, well this could be fun because I do enjoy talking to other filmmakers and people who are into the genre, et cetera. And so this could be a cool opportunity,” he said. “Flash forward six months later, I’ve not launched it.”
We share a laugh as Alioto explains that he’d fallen down the research rabbit hole of trying to craft the perfect launch strategy for his podcast. But that rabbit hole wasn’t really fun—it felt more like a business.
“My girlfriend look[ed] over at me one day and she goes, ‘What are you doing?’ She sees me frantic and everything. I said, ‘I’m doing research on my podcast. It’s got to be great. It’s got to be this and that.’ She goes, ‘No, why are you doing it?’ And I said because ‘It’s going to be fun.’ And she goes, ‘But it doesn’t look fun to me.’ And I realized at that moment, yeah, this is bullshit. I’m doing this for all the wrong reasons,” he said.
Alioto continued, explaining, “You should never do a podcast for any other reason than this is going to be fun and it’s going to be enjoyable and it’ll be creative. And I was looking at this as a business and that’s the wrong way to do it. I know better than that. I don’t make movies that way. Never have I approached the movie like, this is a business. I have an idea. I think it’s cool. Maybe other people think it’ll be cool, too.”
And The Last Podcast Was Born
So now he was left with six months of research and a big question mark about what to do with all that work. Naturally, it became a script, specifically one featuring a young debunker who has a podcast to prove that the supernatural doesn’t exist and an addiction to getting clout.
“Anything can be an addiction, especially with social media,” said Alioto. “And so it felt important that that was the backbone of this.”
From there, Alioto crafted his horror comedy that’s spooky, silly, and full of heart. It’s a tale of supernatural friendship through the lens of a jaded millennial who’s just looking for validation in an apathetic and cutthroat world.
And embodying that character is Eric Tabach, who himself was once an influencer and vlogger. He embodies the sad yet determined Charlie Bailey as a charming loser, a man who frustrates you to no end but you can’t help but love him. Plus, his experience made him the perfect person to play Charlie, especially after Alioto started researching him and discovered that Eric had posted his own “I’m leaving social media” video.
“I go online and the first thing I find is a YouTube channel that he has, and the latest video is almost a year old, and it says ‘Why I’m leaving social media’ [which had a sponsor, by the way],” Alioto said. So immediately Alioto had to give Tabach a call and offer him the role.
“I [was] like, dude, you’re a baller. You got a sponsor for your final show, and he has hundreds of thousands of subscribers. And he walked away and I went, that’s my guy. So I called Eric and said, ‘Hey, I want to send you this script.’ And he read it and he hit me back very fast and said, ‘I’m the guy to do this. There’s no one else. I’m doing this,'” he said.
A Matchmade In Horror Heaven
Tabach, paired with Gabriel Rush who plays the spectral Duncan, makes up the emotional core of The Last Podcast and sells it as more than an influencer horror. It’s a deeper look at social media, belonging, and love through the lens of content creation. Plus, it’s got whispers of An American Werewolf In London, especially thanks to Tabach and Rush.
“The combination of chemistry between those two was phenomenal,” said Alioto. “[Without them], the film doesn’t work, like An American Werewolf In London without David McNaughton and Griffin Dunn. These guys were the Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid of Horror.”
That chemistry and a balanced script create an entertaining supernatural experience that’ll feel all too relatable to any of us out there trying to make a living through our art. Alioto gets to the heart of it and how selling your art can lead to you selling your soul for attention. And we all know what happens when you sell your soul…
The Last Podcast is a triumphant return for Alioto, an updated look at how technology shapes our lives, how we communicate, and how easily we can get lost in the digital cracks.
Categorized:Interviews
