TOO FAST FOR LOVE Jeff Bodean, center, plays burned-out rocker Vincent in ‘House on the Hill,’ the TV show he created.
Rock ’n’ Shock What’s that creeping up near the Sonoma County airport—a TV horror sitcom? BY DAVID TEMPLETON
‘N
ow, if you’ll step over here,� offers writerdirector Daniel Sullivan, matter-of-factly, “I’d like to show you our guillotine. We’d be fools not to have one.�
At the edge of this spookygothic living room set, near a gleaming EZ-Jib camera crane that stands at the center of the room, the guillotine looms with
whimsically creepy menace. No self-respecting house of horrors would be worth its weight in rattling chains without its own head-detaching device, and the fact that this one is actually a nonlethal prop doesn’t really matter. It’s a guillotine. As Sullivan continues his tour through the elaborate set of the Santa Rosa–based television series House on the Hill, it’s clear that whoever erected this sprawling haunted mansion was thoroughly steeped in the classics: The Addams
Family, The Munsters, The Ghost and Mr. Chicken. “We’ve worked hard to include every Halloween-style element we can think of,â€? says Sullivan, who co-writes and directs the show, created and ďŹ nanced by local software impresario Jeff Bodean. Few would suspect that inside this unassuming office building near the Santa Rosa Airport, a 6,000-square-foot movie set has been built, crammed with gloriously gloomy bric-a-brac that looks like it was imported from
Edgar Allan Poe’s dreams. Glassyeyed animal heads stare out from the walls. Slightly distorted portraits of oddly shaped relatives, festooned with faux cobwebs, hang beside an imposing pipe organ. Every clock is stopped at 10:31, a cheeky reference to All Hallows’ Eve. Even the dust-covered furniture looks like it was imported from Transylvania. The interior design, all Victorian wallpaper and soaring wooden columns, is tastefully augmented with armless statues of weeping angels and vase after vase of dead owers. “Our props and furniture,â€? says Sullivan, “are a perfect blend of rare antiques, stuff purchased from Halloween stores and Ross Dress for Less and various things from Jeff’s personal collection of Halloween decorations. “Sometimes,â€? he adds, “people send us things they don’t want anymore. ‘You have a severed head you don’t need? Send it over!’ We’ve become the epicenter of post-Halloween-prop disposal.â€? That said, this is one haunted house that is not open to trick-ortreaters. House on the Hill is very much a working television show, even if Sullivan and Bodean have only produced two episodes in the last two years, with a third getting ready to shoot. Starring Bodean as burned-out rock star Vincent Van Dahl, the sitcom is a ďŹ sh-out-of-water story, following Vincent as he retires from the world of rock and roll, moves in with his valet Livingston and a trio of fun-seeking groupies to a secluded house in the country, and soon realizes that the house is every bit as haunted as it looks. The show’s tagline? “Paparazzi are annoying. Poltergeists are worse.â€? Bodean, who hired Sullivan three years ago to help bring his TV project to ) 20
NO RTH BAY BO H E M I AN | MAR C H 6-1 2, 20 1 3 | BOH EMI A N.COM
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