Yes, that Joe Dante: the man who directed Gremlins, but turned down Airplane! Born in New Jersey, and raised on the cinema of William Castle, Joe began his career as an editor for fellow In Person guest Roger Corman. At New World Pictures, Corman had Dante cut the same image of a burning helicopter into each trailer every time the action flagged – regardless of the film’s period. It is arguable that this reflexive attitude to cinematic logic informs Dante’s satirical eye for visual anarchy; between break-dancing Gremlins and his Trailers from Hell website, there’s the Batman and Bela Lugosi mash up, The Movie Orgy. There's also his rebellious acting career; who could forget his Oscar® un-nominated ‘Party Waiter’ in Hollywood Boulevard, a role followed by his mesmeric performance as 'Scuba Diver # 2' in his still-better-than-Jaws debut, Piranha? While his films are filled with a series of iconic images – think live on-air werewolf transformations, or a paranoid Tom Hanks in a murderous suburb – his true talent lies in his pop cultural disconnecting of Hollywood’s candyglossed surface. From the Peltzers' inability to respect other cultures in Gremlins, to scathing attacks on the conjoined interests of the toy industry and the military in Small Soldiers, Dante inveigles his subversive philosophy into LaLaland’s sterilised suburbs. While the surface of his films have the pep of a Rockin' Ricky Rialto radio broadcast, they hide a world of frightening change, filled with people who have no control – whether it be the politics of the Cuban Missile Crisis, or the death of a father at Christmas. Like Carroll, Grimm, and a pre-war Disney, Dante understands that the fabulous is predicated upon the uncertain, and he stands as one of the few modern masters of such storytelling. He is the closest cinema has come to the spirit of Chuck Jones, where anarchy and the power of pastiche hides a deeper level of sensibility – albeit via monsters being pulped in a blender, and cartoons running wild through the Louvre. Ladies and germs, we give you the King of pop cultural carnage; the man who kept a post-Truck Turner career Dick Miller in food stamps, and made children hoarse around the world as they parodied Stripe's "Deagle, Deagle, Deagle" Gremlins chant.