Why do you think thse films have become so popular with cult audiences?
I think a lot of it is nostalgia. You look at these films and you see an unvarnished view of middle America in the 1960s, when cops had crew cuts and women wore cat-eye glasses. Then you see this utterly tragic side of middle America, when people drove death-trap cars without seatbelts and that American dream is suddenly smeared across the four-lane highway. It’s like these films offer a picture-perfect view of small-town life in Ohio, then punch a hole in the center of it. Some people collect metal lunchboxes to remember their childhood. Other people — the cynical ones, I guess — like to seek out more grim artifacts. It’s related somehow to the recent fascination with carnival freak shows or Bettie Page bondage photos… chapters of American pop culture that were neglected for years because they were considered too tasteless and lacking in artistic merit… but which reveal what was really happening in our culture — below the surface. Q: It would have been very easy to make somethi
