The Laboratorium : Dual Careers

Herschell Gordon Lewis is best known to the world as the director of 1963' Blood Feast, which more or less single-handedly created the "gore movie" genre. Over the next decade, he directed over two dozen films chock full of over-the-top bloodshed. Then he retired, and became . . .

. . . an advertising copywriter. No, worse. A direct-marketing copywriter, one determined to show the rest of the world how to close deals with perfect phrasing. He conducts seminars in word choice that make Glengarry Glen Ross seem low-pressure. As he explains on his web site, "Every word is a weapon."

Perhaps he's not so far from his first career, after all.