Podcast: Jonathan Janz on ‘Butterfly Kisses’

Some guests were just made to appear on Certified Forgotten. That's certainly the case for Jonathan Janz, author-slash-contributor of celebrated horror books like Veil and The End of the World As We Know It. On this week's episode, Janz joins Matt Donato and Matthew Monagle to talk about his writing process, but just as importantly, to talk about Butterfly Kisses, a found footage movie that Janz and his family have not been able to shake since the first time they watched it.

Like most good found footage films, Butterfly Kisses begins with a box of tapes. Aspiring filmmaker Gavin (Seth Adam Kallick) is thrilled when his in-laws discover a student film in their basement – after years of struggling as a wedding videographer, this is his chance to turn that footage into a documentary people want to see. The film, made a decade earlier by two college students, is itself a documentary about local legend Peeping Tom, who hunts people stupid enough to pass a dangerous challenge. But as things turn dark for the student filmmakers, Gavin’s life also begins to fall apart, until he can no longer tell if he’s the author of a terrifying documentary – or its subject. Erik Kristopher Myers’s Butterfly Kisses may be a found footage film with a found footage film, but somehow, impossibly, it’s also something wonderful and new.

In this short excerpt from the episode, Janz explains why he is still haunted by the book, to the point of dreaming of his own fictional follow up:

The moment I saw that movie – and I don't know if it'll ever happen, and I'm not necessarily requesting it – but I thought about writing a novel in that world, continuing that story. Because it's so rich, and there's so much possibility there. And again, we're not going to give away complete spoilers, but with how that story ends, I feel like it almost begs a continuation.

The Butterfly Kisses episode of the Certified Forgotten podcast with Kate Sánchez is now available to stream on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, YouTube Music, or the podcast platform of your choice.