Michael G. grew up on pulpy horror movies and offbeat fiction. But over the years, he’s found that weird stories followed him as often as he followed them.
“[My family lived] next door to a park, right? There’s this possum that would sit on the fence next to us. It would watch us watch TV,” Michael said. “That was the weirdest thing ever. Really, possum? You’re sitting there, watching us watch TV? Regularly, he’d be up there, just sitting there, watching.”
He’s got a trove of anecdotes dating back to his early childhood and through his adulthood, capturing little oddities that have stuck with him over his 56 years.
“One time, I was this close from a sleeping lion. I was working at the Shrine Circus back in the ‘90s. His paws were as big as your head, so imagine what the rest of him would look like. TV and the zoo don’t do the big cats justice, you have to see ‘em up close. That’s what you need, and people don’t get that,” Michael said. “Rule number one of encountering a sleeping lion: don’t wake it up. Otherwise you may find yourself its midnight snack!”
Beyond his own stories, he’s got a lot of fondness for blockbuster cinema, like Godzilla, Star Wars, and classic monster movies — which you may know from his film reviews in The Contributor. His favorite movies, though, are about the werewolf; a time-honored bogeyman Michael finds is woefully underrepresented in today’s creature features.
“The Howling has the best transformation of man to werewolf; that’s what a werewolf really looks like. Not those werewolves in Twilight,” said Michael. “Werewolves are underrated. There’s not that many movies being made about them. I’d love to see a movie where it deals with the person: his struggles during the day.”
It’s a struggle Michael knows a thing or two about, as the imagery behind werewolves has helped him through his own struggles with homelessness, anger management, and youthful ennui.
“I ended up in a foster home when I was 17. I had so much anger and violence inside me,” Michael said. “I didn’t like that part of me, so I created a visualization technique … I visualized my anger and my violence as a werewolf inside me, and I chained him up in silver chains. Once in a while, he’ll get out, the anger will get out, but most of the time he’s chained in silver chains. I don’t know if it’ll work for other people, it works for me.”
For Michael, the things we fear in ourselves are not unlike the things we fear in films or books: only as frightening as we make them.
“When I was growing up … across the street was a cemetery. I was either going to have to be afraid of horror movies and stuff like that the rest of my life, or embrace ‘em. So I embraced horror movies,” Michael explained. “The 1972 Gargoyles scared me, I had nightmares … Then I saw the movie again in my adult age, and I looked at the Gargoyles like, ‘I can see the zipper on the back of the costume! Are you serious, I got scared of this?’”
As for how he’s gotten through bouts of homelessness, that’s taken sheer frugality — even if it means giving up things that have helped him before, like his treasured cats.
“Cats are a cure for depression,” Michael said. “But I haven’t had a cat in so long, I don’t want one anymore … the food and the cat litter are so expensive nowadays. I could barely take care of myself, let alone an animal. The place I’m staying now won’t take cats, anyway. I had to sleep in my storage unit two nights in a row in order to save [enough money to stay where I am now],” he said. “You still have to go out and try and make some money, pay the bills, but those food stamps sure do help.”
When it comes to his work with The Contributor, Michael is eager to write more movie reviews and get feedback from the paper’s readers about them. He said he hopes his writing and what he’s shared in this spotlight helps inspire other vendors and members of the Nashville community.
“I’m living proof that a homeless person can get housing on their own,” he said.