Casino of Frankenstein (Pt. 2)

Deeper into the Heart of the American Drive-In

(If you missed the first installment, you can check it out here.)

Here’s the thing about Joe Bob Briggs: he’s a fictional character. It’s easy to forget that.

“Joe Bob” was created by writer/actor John Bloom, who has a seriously impressive body of articles, columns, books and performances to his credit. Bloom’s work has won an Edgar, three National Magazine Awards, and even a Pulitzer nomination! His most recent book is Eccentric Orbits, a sprawling history of an early satellite telephone system (Iridium Communications Inc.), and how it almost all came crashing down to Earth.

As an actor? You might have seen Bloom in Mick Garris’s adaptation of The Stand, or perhaps serving as a correspondent on late 1990s-era Daily Show. I’d bet anything you’ve seen him in Martin Scorsese’s Casino, where he portrayed hapless slots manager Don Ward, who receives a brutal dressing down by Ace Rothstein (Robert De Niro) after he allows a bunch of con men to rip off the Tangiers for $45,000 in 20 minutes.

DON WARD: Well, it’s a casino! People gotta win sometimes.

ACE ROTHSTEIN: Ward, you’re pissing me off.

That’s John Bloom. An extremely accomplished investigative journalist, columnist and performer.

Joe Bob Briggs, on the other hand, is a redneck persona Bloom created for a movie review column he began writing for The Dallas Times-Herald in 1982.

Joe Bob’s beat: the All-American drive-in. He doesn’t have any patience for “indoor bullstuff” (films screened at theaters with a roof); he is a rabid fan of the gory B movies and wild exploitation flicks. And his genius was making all of them, even the gnarliest, worthy of discussion and celebration.

I first met Joe Bob in the pages of Shadows in Eden, a Clive Barker retrospective that included his review of Hellraiser (1987), titled “Sex in the Attic with Devilhead Slime.”

A brief quote:

Frank is back from Devil Land with most of his skin ripped off and his blood vessels exposed. He’s looked better. But here’s the gross part: He wants to get ROMANTIC.

Here’s the grosser part: SHE wants to get romantic. Here’s the one that makes the Vomit Meter go off the scale: They DO get romantic.

If you don’t see the artistry in that, I don’t know what to tell you. You can practically hear his voice climbing the octaves. Joe Bob’s enthusiasm—as well as his obsession with quantifying the drive-in experience for the discerning consumer—is infectious. You see, Joe Bob is perhaps best known for his “Drive-In Totals.”

For example:

Anyway, when I read his Hellraiser review, I was 19 and I remember thinking: this dude gets it.

Not long after, I was interning at Philadelphia Magazine when a review copy of The Cosmic Wisdom of Joe Bob Briggs showed up. I very much dug it because there was that voice again. In fact, if you’d asked me to name my favorite writers back then? I probably would have said Clive Barker, Hunter S. Thompson, Tim O’Brien and Joe Bob Briggs.

Over the next few decades, Joe Bob hosted two very successful cable shows: Joe Bob’s Drive-In Theater (for The Movie Channel) and TNT’s MonsterVision. I didn’t watch either in those days, because for most of the 90s I was poor and didn’t own a TV, let alone cable. But I was still a Joe Bob admirer from afar.

Fast-forward all the way to the summer of 2018. My daughter Evie was going through grueling treatment for leukemia. By mid-July she was back home with us, and enjoying a visit from her best friend, who flew in for Evie’s birthday. That weekend I desperately craved an escape from the anxiety and I found it in a Shudder special called The Last Drive-In With Joe Bob Briggs. Holy shit, Joe Bob! The dude with that voice! Even better, Shudder was promising an all-night marathon that I could enjoy in the comfort of our apartment.

So many horror nerds logged on to Shudder.com, we (famously) broke the internet. I missed quite a lot of the opening film as my computer struggled to connect. (And to be honest, Shudder continues to be a little buggy, but that’s become part of the fun.) Once things settled down, I was drawn into surreal world of Joe Bob and his companion Darcy the Mail Girl, who perched themselves on lawn chairs and guided us through films like Tourist Trap, Rabid, The Prowler, and yes… Slimeball Bowl-A-Rama, just to name the first few.

This virtual trip to an imaginary drive-in hosted by a fictional character was exactly what I’d needed.

The success of the marathon spawned a weekly show (recently renewed for its seventh season), holiday specials (e.g., “Joe Bob Ruins Christmas”), soundtrack albums, VHS tapes, action figures, plush toys, and most importantly… the Mutant Fam, as Joe Bob devotees came to be known. The drive-in may be virtual, but us mutants would talk about the movies in real time on social media, primarily on Twitter. If you said something witty, Joe Bob and Darcy might even retweet you.

Over the past six years I’ve made a ritual of hanging at the drive-in with Joe Bob and Darcy (and a takeout hoagie from Jersey Mike’s). This was especially true during Covid, when going to an actual theater was an impossibility. This drew us mutants together even more closely. It was the next best thing to going to the actual movies. Perhaps even better, in a way: you’re not allowed to crack wise with your pals during a screening.

And I’ve been lucky enough to enjoy a retweet from Joe Bob and Darcy now and again (sometimes multiple times in a single night!) as we feast our eyes on stuff like Death Spa and Dr. Giggles. I’ve even corresponded a little with Joe Bob, by email and actual mail. This is another feature of The Last Drive-In: Darcy’s mail bag. The best episodes feature a heartfelt letter of thanks to Joe Bob, who clearly is uncomfortable with sentimentality. Even when these letters make him cry.

So now here I was, standing in the blazing Vegas sun, about to say howdy to two of my favorite people on TV. People I knew! People who knew me! Or at least, retweeted me!

“Hey, Joe Bob… it’s Duane Swierczynski. Sometimes you retweet some of my absurd comments during the show.”

Blank look from Joe Bob.

Darcy, however, jumped in to admonish him: “Joe Bob… you know Duane.”

Joe Bob nodded and mumbled something funny and apologetic about his social media attention span. But I’m fairly sure he was still drawing a blank.

That’s when I realized two things:

Numero Uno: Darcy was probably the one retweeting me on Joe Bob’s behalf (and thank you for that).

Numero Two-Oh: I had been corresponding with a fictional character.

The mistake was genuinely mine. I mean, imagine if I went up to Robert Englund in full Freddy Krueger makeup and said:

ME: Hey, Freddy… it’s Duane Swierczynski. I was the guy in the sixth row cheering when you, like, turned that sporty girl into a giant cockroach!

FREDDY: Huh?

Part of Joe Bob’s charm is making you feel like you have an intimate relationship with him, that he speaks your language and feels your mutant pain. This is John Bloom’s gift as a performer, which sits right next to his writerly voice.

But I forgot that a relationship with a fictional character is always a one-way street. You gaze into the screen; the screen usually doesn’t gaze back into you.

Not to mention that Joe Bob is just one man; we mutants are legion. He can’t possibly be on a first name basis with us all.

I pivoted and told Joe Bob how impressed I was that he would hosting for 12+ hours two nights in a row, but also doing two 90-minute walking tours right after (and a bonus signing at a horror toy shop). This weekend, Joe Bob was officially the hardest-working performer in Vegas.

Joe Bob (or maybe John Bloom) let loose a grim laugh. “Don’t remind me!”

With my poster signed, I wandered off to find a place to set up my folding chair and prepare for a long night of movies in the desert air. Because that’s what I came for. Joe Bob is famous for saying: the drive-in will never die. And in that spirit, I was determined to stay awake until the bitter end.

Did I make it? If so, how?

You’ll find out in the next installment…