owen egerton, director of such horror films as mercy black and blood fest, is also a talented novelist. In his recent Hollow book, a religious studies professor mourning the loss of his son becomes obsessed with the idea that the center of the earth is inhabited by an advanced civilization.
“Hollow is the intersection of two obsessions, one is the workbook and the other is the hollow earth theory,” says egerton in episode 444 of the geek’s guide to the galaxy podcast. “Who knew those two crossed paths? but I think they were meant to be.”
You are reading: Hollow earth theory books
The idea of a hollow earth may sound ridiculous, but scientists and politicians once took the theory seriously, and even today it still has some die-hard supporters. “Pretty much every book event I did for hollow, there were one or two people in the back of the room, and they would be very excited that I had written this book, and I think very disappointed when I started saying earth. it’s not hollow,” says egerton.
To get to the bottom of the theory, Egerton even volunteered to sail to the North Pole on a Russian icebreaker as part of an expedition to locate an entrance to the Hollow Earth. (Hollow Earth lore holds that giant holes, known as symme holes, are located at each pole.) unfortunately, the trip never happened, at least as far as he knows.
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“It happened in and out of the possibility of it happening,” says Egerton. “It was funded, and then it would have to be funded by people sending money, and it’s been up and down. but who knows? we may not hear from them for a few years, and then they will come out of the south pole and the world will have changed.”
while writing the book, egerton viewed the hollow earth theory as a bit of harmless fun, but recent events have made him reconsider that view. “When he was writing about the hollow earth, he was celebrating people’s ability to believe what was obviously not true,” he says. “But as the book became a reality, and as Donald Trump was elected, I found more and more that those conspiracy theories weren’t so pretty, that that power could move in many different ways, and in a dangerous way.” /p>
Listen to the full interview with owen egerton in episode 444 of the geek’s guide to the galaxy (above). and see some highlights of the discussion below.
owen egerton at the Alamo shooting house:
“It introduced me to a community of like-minded assholes, and it was also really my film school. i would stay and watch these bizarre movies, some of them movie classics and some of them drive-in movies that tim league had bought. there was a period where tim league basically heard about a drive-in movie that was going to close, and just bought all their movies. I didn’t know what they were. he drove to, I think, oklahoma, he drove back, smashing up the van that he had loaded all these prints in, and he basically said, ‘once a week, people can come for free, because I don’t know what these movies are, because I don’t they’re tagged, and we’re just going to look at them, and find out as we go.’”
owen egerton on directing:
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“i got a call one day, and it was jason blum, and jason blum said, ‘yeah, we want to buy this script.’ and i said, ‘that’s great. there’s only one other group interested in that, and i they were going to let direct”. and he said, ‘oh, you want to direct, huh?’ I said ‘yes’. and he said ‘have you ever done is it?’ I’m like, ‘yeah, my first movie just screened at fantastic fest a week ago.’ and he says, ‘send me a link. I’ll see you during lunch. so I did, and I have to tell you that it was not an easy day for me. I was like, ‘what’s going on? Jason blum is watching my movie!’ And he called me later that day and he said, ‘We’ll make you a deal. we can find a way for you to address this. let’s do it.’”
owen egerton on terror:
“I think often when the bigger studios get really excited about horror, when they see what a low-budget movie can do, that breaks the rules and scares people by giving them something out of the ordinary All too often, a studio swarms in and says, ‘Let’s take that, we’re going to clean it up, and we’re going to polish all the rough edges, and we’re going to give people something much safer and much more commercialized. and you find that that happens over and over again, with different franchises and different horror IPs. but overall i think horror is in a great place. horror is far from dead. it is alive and kicking. he’s kicking butt. And I don’t just want to say he’s raising money. I mean there are more voices, more diverse points of view in these stories, which makes the buffet even more delicious.”
owen egerton on hollow:
“The ideas that I think work best for me start with a question, a persistent question. and for me, this question was: what is at the heart of the universe? these horrible things happen, people suffer, and people feel lonely, and people lose each other, and there is also so much beauty, there are sunrises and babies. they both exist at exactly the same time, and I was trying to understand, ‘well, what does that mean? Is there a heart at the center of the universe?’, which turns out to be the question the job book asks. … I read different translations: Stephen Mitchell’s translation really affected me, and his essays on it. a lot of different writings and thoughts about him. I keep coming back to that question: what does it mean that the universe is both so painful and so beautiful?
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