Original subtitles

One of the wonderful things that movies can do

is bring you to places that obviously you can't see

anywhere else in the world or reality,

and one of those areas is tales that come from the other side.

And, uh, that's always been a mainstay

in our, sort of, movie diet.

And, uh, so my interest has always been in a lot of that dark stuff

and in a lot of that otherworldly stuff like in TALES FROM THE CRYPT

and THE FRIGHTENERS is... ls one step beyond all of that.

When my daughter Hayley was 18 months old,

we were in our basement of our building

in New York and we were doing laundry.

And, uh, in laundry machines. We weren't, like,

beating it against like rocks or anything.

And, uh, so we're down there and she, sort of,

toddled off into this disused room

and she just... There was nothing in this room.

I mean, it was literally just cinder block walls

and a light bulb in the ceiling,

and she just, sort of, pointed at this wall and said, "Baby!

"Baby!"

And I said, "There's no baby there, sweetheart.

That's just a wall." And she looked at me like,

"Baby.

"Baby-II

And my hairs on the back of my neck went "boing".

And so I said, "Let's go get Mommy."

So we ran upstairs and got my wife,

who jumped about 18 inches into the air

and said, "Let's go back down!"

So we ran back downstairs and, uh,

we put Hayley in the room and Leslie said,

"Hayley, show Mommy the baby."

And Hayley went over and was pointing at this thing and it, sort of...

She's, sort of, tracking it with her finger

and then Leslie said, "Hayley, can you go kiss the baby?"

And Hayley went over to it and, sort of, kissed this spot on the wall

and then tracked it with her eyes a little bit more and then

she just, kind of, stood back and came over like, "Hmm-hmm. What next?"

I believe that there must be,

something else other than this... This reality.

We must go somewhere when we die and I don't know where,

but I definitely believe and I would love

to see a ghost, but I've never seen one.

I know Peter's seen one.

It was about 6:30 in the morning.

It was an old apartment block that we used to be in.

It was only, like, a 100-year-old building and I was lying in bed.

Fran had just gotten up to go and make a cup of coffee.

And I was awake, I was certainly wide awake, I wasn't sleeping,

and the door of the bedroom was open.

And I was lying there

and suddenly a woman comes into the bedroom, in through the door.

And my first thought was that, not that it's a ghost,

my first thought was she was real.

That was actually really terrifying because

I thought, "What's she doing here?"

You know, there was only Fran and I in the building and

she was also very, very creepy-looking because she had a face

that was locked into a scream. Like a frozen scream.

Sort of like... Like quite a terrifying look.

And so, within a second or two, I'm taking this in,

I'm thinking, "it's a real person."

She's got a scream on her face,

making no sound, silent.

And my heart starts thumping and then after, like, two or three seconds,

because all this happens very quickly.

After two or three seconds, I realize

that she's a ghost, that she's not real.

She's... She's gliding across the floor. She's not actually walking.

And also, I guess, she was, like, transparent.

There was a... Sort of a... It didn't feel solid.

So I realize I'm looking at a ghost and that's almost a relief.

I mean, it's actually...

You know, it's almost a relief that it's not a real person

because they are more dangerous, I'm sure, than ghosts.

And so I'm watching her and she

goes across the floor and she slowly rises in the air

and my eyes are totally locked onto this figure

and then she disappears out of the wall

on the other side of the bedroom.

And the whole thing took maybe six or seven seconds

from the doorway across.

And I mean, I was, like, trembling. It was like...

You know, I felt exactly the same as you do

if you just have a near miss in your car or something, you know.

And you just feel kind of weak and your heart's pounding.

And I called out to Fran and she came running in.

Now Fran had lived in this apartment for, like, five years,

you know, prior to this.

And I said to Fran, "I think I've seen a ghost."

And the first thing that she said to me, and this is true.

The first thing she said to me was,

"Was it a woman with a screaming face?"

And I said, "Yeah, she had a screaming face."

Fran said that about three years earlier, she had woken up

in the middle of the night, she was by herself, and opened her eyes

and at the foot of the bed was a woman with a screaming face

who was standing at the foot of the bed, staring at her,

and this was the same room.

And so, you know, that's the sort of thing that you can't make up.

I mean, Fran had never told me about that experience that she'd had

and then I saw the same ghost, you know, three years later.

So, I don't know.

I mean, I've always believed in that type of thing, I guess

because I just generally believe in most things.

And, you know, I think that ghosts do exist.

It's not the reason why we made THE FRIGHTENERS, however.

And certainly, you know, THE FRIGHTENERS is supposed to be

a lot more entertaining and funny

than what that particular ghost was.

I mean, there's gotta be some kind

of rational explanation for all this.

Oh no.

You're next, pal.

Another one gone.

I mean, that's actually quite a nice shot, though.

Wobble, wobble, wobble, wobble, and crash!

Cut!

During 1992, Fran Walsh and I were

working on the script of HEAVENLY CREATURES.

BRAINDEAD was in distribution around the world

and we started working on our next project.

During the course of writing HEAVENLY CREATURES

we used to take breaks and go for walks

just to, kind of, clear our head,

and I remember one Sunday afternoon

we were taking a walk along the Seatoun seafront

to the local shops to buy some milk

and we were talking about some ideas for films.

And I think because HEAVENLY CREATURES was so factual based,

it was a true story, our minds were,

sort of going into more imaginative areas,

you know, making things up and

we talked about ghost story ideas

and we came up with the seed of THE FRIGHTENERS

during that walk to the shops,

which was basically the idea about

the psychic con man who runs the scam,

has the ghosts scaring people and earning money for him.

So that was the seed of the idea.

We came back and had to carry on working on HEAVENLY CREATURES,

but we managed to write a two-page story outline

that was the basis of our idea at that time.

It doesn't actually bear a huge resemblance

to the finished movie when you look at it today.

It has all sorts of things like the local sheriff was the big villain

and the mayor of the town was embezzling somebody.

There's a whole lot of stuff in here

that never made it into the movie.

So having committed it all to paper

we send it off to Ken Kamins at ICM, our agent,

and we forgot about it for three or four months.

We were busy working on the HEAVENLY CREATURES script.

And we got a call from Ken sometime later.

He'd sent the story idea to Bob Zemeckis.

Now, Bob, at that stage, was working on

ideas for possible TALES FROM THE CRYPT feature films.

And, you know, Ken thought this might be a possible idea for him.

Bob read it.

He liked the idea, but didn't think

it was suitable for TALES FROM THE CRYPT.

But he wanted to develop it as a stand-alone project.

In January, '93, Fran and I were in Los Angeles.

We had lunch with Bob. It was the first time we met him.

We sat down and had lunch

and they pitched me this very intriguing and bizarre story

which I immediately fell in love with.

You know, we talked about our ideas

and we, sort of, knocked some other ideas together at lunch

and basically Bob said, at the end of that lunch

that he'd really like us to develop the screenplay.

And this was something that I was looking

to do, but not make myself,

but I have a real, you know, affinity toward this type of film

and Peter was at a place where he wanted to really do something

that would, you know, stretch

the bounds of computer graphics and storytelling,

which is what this does.

So we were both in the right place at the right time.

We were about to get lost in HEAVENLY CREATURES for quite a long time

because shooting was due to commence very soon

and Bob said, "That's fine," because he was

doing FORREST GUMP, I think, that same year.

So nothing much happened with THE FRIGHTENERS

for the next, you know, six, seven, eight months.

We were busy shooting HEAVENLY CREATURES

and just, you know, lost ourselves

completely in that project for a while.

By the time HEAVENLY CREATURES came to the editing process,

which takes several months,

we turned our attention back to THE FRIGHTENERS now

and started to think about some more story ideas

and we developed the script and the story

a lot further than obviously what's on these two pages here.

The idea of the villains

was very much re-worked.

And, in fact, we incorporated some themes from HEAVENLY CREATURES

into the villains of THE FRIGHTENERS at that point.

We liked the idea of the teenage killers

and we were obviously, you know,

right immersed in that world at the time.

And so we took it to its ludicrous extreme,

as it were, with THE FRIGHTENERS

having one of the teenage killers as dead

and another one is now, like, 45 years old.

And the dead killer comes back and

the relationship between the two continues.

And this was all, sort of, stuff

that we thought would be fun to carry on exploring, at the time.

We finally wrote the first draft of THE FRIGHTENERS

and this was, like, a year after our meeting with Bob, it was early 1994

and I remember we actually sent our draft away

on the day of the Los Angeles earthquake, it just sticks in my mind.

I had a call from Bob shortly after

he'd read the script and he really liked it.

He wanted us to proceed and go ahead and make the movie.

This is like nothing I've produced, but in a strange way

it's everything that I love in film-making.

It's about ghosts and murder and mayhem

and action and special effects and comedy.

It was on that initial phone call with him

that I remember bringing up the idea

of shooting the film in New Zealand.

I mean, New Zealand is where I'm based.

I didn't particularly want to go to Los Angeles at that time

and work there for a year.

I wanted to stay at home and Bob was very relaxed about the idea.

His one concern was, "Does New Zealand look like the States?"

"And can we make it look like America?"

THE FRIGHTENERS is set in a small town

and so we thought, "Well, there's gotta be

some places in New Zealand that look like

"Northern California or something around that area."

So we sent a location scout around the country

and photographed, I guess, 30 or 40 small New Zealand towns.

And we showed those to Bob and the studio and they were very happy

about the idea of us shooting in New Zealand.

Some work developed on the script over the next month or two

and we finally had, you know, a script which the studio green-lit.

I mean, again, that initial script is very different

to what the finished film is like.

But if anyone's interested in knowing

what that script actually was

the novelization of THE FRIGHTENERS.

I remember when I saw this novelization

just after the film was released

I was in a bookshop and I had a thumb through it,

and I realized with horror

that it was actually based on one of our very early drafts of the script.

It doesn't bear much resemblance to what we ultimately filmed,

but it's, kind of... It is interesting

because it shows you, you know,

just what THE FRIGHTENERS was like in its very early stages.

Before we started shooting any film

I storyboarded the movie with Christian Rivers, who's a storyboard artist

I've worked with for the last three or four movies.

The method that we work is quite simple.

I sit down and I have the script

in my lap and I just thumb through it

and Christian sits beside me and I, sort of, describe to him

the shots, you know, as I imagine them

coming off the script and he draws them up.

And we can generally get through, like, 100 drawings a day.

The problem I remember with THE FRIGHTENERS

is that time caught up with me. And, uh...

We'd storyboarded about two-thirds

of the movie, but at that point,

I think actors were arriving in the country and suddenly

my attention was turned to a whole lot of other things

and so we went into the film without story boarding

the climactic scenes at all.

And that was not so much of a problem

because I don't regard storyboards as being the bible.

I like to have them because they are

like the first pass that I get at directing the movie

and it's the cheapest way of doing it

because it just involves pencil and paper.

But I like to keep an open mind and

if we come up with better ideas on the set,

better ideas for camera angles or for the way that the scene is gonna be cut

I certainly like to be flexible and change things.

With special LaserDisc editions like this FRIGHTENERS box set,

it's very common, at the end of the discs,

to have the storyboards as one-frame, you know,

pictures where you've gotta use your remote control

and you just sit there and flick

the stepping thing on, you know, endlessly.

I usually find I'm too impatient to do that

and I don't usually bother watching the storyboards.

I thought for this FRIGHTENERS disc

it might be interesting to try something a little different.

And that's where we filmed all the storyboards

with two seconds or so per picture,

and we, kind of, just run them down.

It's almost like seeing a flip book

or an animated thing or something.

I don't know quite what it's gonna turn out like,

but we'll have to have a look at it.

This is gonna run for about 45 minutes.

So, if anybody doesn't wanna sit here for

45 minutes watching this, this is the time

to flick to the next chapter and to move on,

but, you know, it will be interesting.

THE FRIGHTENERS evolved a lot after the storyboards were done

and what you're gonna see now

is not really that similar, in some respects, to the finished film.

And there's no dialogue or script

that you're gonna hear, so it's gonna be

difficult to understand what's going on in some of the dialogue scenes,

but at least most of it's visual and I think

it will be interesting to have a look at it.

So let's run it down. Here we go.

I'll press the button and we'll start.

The storyboards begin pretty much as the film does

with the trek in towards the Bartlett house

and what we call the Wallpaper Man sequence,

but the primary difference between this early form of the scene

is that it's Old Lady Bartlett who you're seeing here

approaching Patricia's door. She's hearing noises.

She gets attacked by Wallpaper Man.

It's not actually Patricia who gets pursued.

The primary reason why we changed this is that we decided later

that we wanted to create more of a red-herring role for Patricia.

We wanted to make people feel that possibly her mother was behind this.

And so it made much more sense to have Patricia being the victim

in this scene rather than the old lady.

Because, in a sense, our suspicions

would immediately fall on Patricia

if this was the way the film actually opened, and we didn't want that.

I always loved this idea, which was Ceiling Man

grabbing the old lady round the throat

and kind of hanging her in the kitchen

and she actually zaps him with...

Her foot hits the electrical switch

and the guy sparks off and drops her,

so I thought that was quite a neat gag.

And this was another gag that we never used,

which was the giant fingers

closing around her, coming out of the carpet.

Here's the first time we saw Patricia.

And this is where we pretty much reverted to...

The film reverts back to the storyboards again

when Patricia gets overbalanced by Carpet Man

and dragged into her room.

The opening credit sequence of the film,

and in fact, the first few scenes

of the storyboards are pretty much the way

that they were shot in the movie.

The relationship between these two characters in the newspaper office,

Magda, the editor, and young Steve, the journalist

was expanded somewhat in this original version of the film

as you'll see when we get to it a little bit later on.

So Frank Bannister and Ray Lynskey have

their first introduction with each other

pretty much as we did in the original film.

And this follows on into Lucy arriving at the Bartlett house

which, as a sequence, is pretty much the same as was shot.

The haunting scene ends with a little gag with the frozen chicken

that we didn't actually put in the cinema release, although it was filmed

and it's back on the LaserDisc.

This is our first introduction to Frank Bannister, essentially.

And there was a little gag shot that I drew

in the storyboards that we didn't even film

where Frank gets out of his car here.

And that shot there is like THE EXORCIST movie poster

which was a sort of a Story boarding joke

that never made it into the movie.

Now it's Frank's arriving home to his house

and the introduction of the ghosts

where things start to get radically different

to what we finally used in the film.

The gag here with the vomiting ectoplasm

is pretty much as it was.

But once they get into the house,

I know that we did make a lot of changes.

I liked the idea of Frank being able

to grab these guys and stretch them

and it's like Stuart pings back against the ground.

We never used that.

The original idea for when they first arrive home

is that Cyrus wants to put some music on.

We actually were gonna get the rights to the theme from SHAFT

and so he's, kind of, boogying to this music

and he ends up sticking his head in the speaker

and his body vibrates with the music,

which I thought was quite a funny gag.

This is a little different as he comes out of the head of the shower

rather than through the plughole.

And this was the introduction to the ghost

which is a little different to the way it ends up in the movie

where the ghost Judge is just like blazing away with his guns

and he's trying to shoot Rustler, the dog

who's defying gravity, running around the walls.

The Judge ends up blasting at Frank.

He nicks a bit off Stuart's ear

'cause we wanted to have that

to prove that the ghosts can actually get wounded by ghost bullets

which is a plot point that's important later on.

More gags with Rustler defying gravity

as Frank pulls him off the ceiling and crashes to the floor.

And the Judge finally manages to retrieve his jawbone.

That was a good gag that I liked

of Rustler sitting by the fireside actually

chewing a bone and you realize that it's

his own hand, that he's chewing his own arm.

That bony arm.

I think this Judge by the fireside scene plays

pretty much the way that it does in the movie.

We're back to a sequence that's

just pretty much the way that we shot it.

Where

Frank realizes that Lucy's husband, Ray

has in fact mysteriously died, and is now a ghost and

Ray begs Frank to take him up to his funeral.

So we're into a little sequence here which I don't think

deviates much from the finished film.

Arriving at the cemetery, we're gonna get our

first introduction to the character of the Gatekeeper.

Now the Gatekeeper is

a figure that never made it through

into the finished movie. Here he is.

But he was shot in a form that's somewhat different to this.

And later on, in the documentary, we do

cover this Gatekeeper footage quite extensively, in fact

we play, pretty much, the scene as it was finally finished.

That never made it into the movie.

So here we are at the restaurant scene

with Lucy having dinner with Frank and her dead husband.

This scene plays pretty much as it does in the movie.

Not the most interesting thing to look at when you haven't got dialogue.

So Frank has to get up and go into the bathroom

where he's...

He has an encounter with Magda on the way out.

Now this was a little different because

we wanted to establish Magda as being

in the restaurant on the night.

We'll see the reason for that a little bit later.

This scene with the victim in the toilet plays pretty much as it does.

The Reaper action is a little bit different because the Reaper was, like

hovering above one of the toilet stalls

comes straight down and gets the guy.

He doesn't come out of the mirror

as he ultimately does in the film.

The idea for the mirror, I think, just came about because we

looked at the mirror on the set and really liked it

and it was just one of those ideas that we developed

when we were actually shooting the film.

So Frank walks out of the toilet and returns to his table.

Now this was a sequence where we actually shot

the background plates for this scene, but we never

finished it, never put the Reaper into it.

Frank sits down at the table, he's nervous and sweaty,

and suddenly the Reaper looms into the restaurant.

Now we were playing this in a way that Frank

can see the Reaper, nobody else can. But Frank wants to

not let the Reaper know that he can see him,

not draw attention to himself, so he's trying to

interact with Lucy, but all the time

he's seeing this thing hovering around

in a threatening kind of a way. It looms up right

behind Lucy.

And then Magda makes her appearance and she's

a bit drunk and she starts to abuse Frank

for having dinner with Ray Lynskey's widow.

And Reaper suddenly rushes out and Frank hurries after it.

Which was all designed to obviously

make him look very suspicious when

they find the body in the bathroom, later on.

So Frank is watching the Reaper leaping over rooftops.

And now he's in pursuit.

And this is pretty much the way that it was in the film.

Now we are at the museum and this sequence is a little bit different

to what ended up in the film.

We started with a lecture to a bunch of guests.

And we have the gag, right up front, of the Judge

being attracted to the mummy, and jumping into the sarcophagus.

Stuart and Cyrus are there and they're kind of going,

"Oh, no, Judge, you're embarrassing us there."

It's that type of thing.

And the Judge, in fact, gets pulled out by the legs, by Cyrus.

And then the Reaper makes his appearance.

And goes up to the woman who was giving the lecture.

And she, in fact, is the Reaper's victim in the museum.

In the movie, of course, it's Steve

the young journalist from the newspaper office.

Now, Cyrus has been wounded by the Reaper's scythe.

And he slides down the wall leaving an ectoplasmic

kind of a puddle as they're attending

to the body of the young woman.

Frank sees the light and realizes

that something's on in the museum

and hurries across there.

And he arrives just in time to find the spirit

of the young woman going up the tunnel.

As you can see, we adapted this

in a slightly different way for the finished movie,

making it a different character.

This is the museum curator, who's asking Frank for help

because he thinks the museum might be haunted.

But Stuart is calling Frank over

because Cyrus has been wounded.

Of course, the curator looks and doesn't see anything there.

But they manage to drag Cyrus away into

the privacy of one of the displays, which is a tomb,

and then Stuart and Cyrus have a big talk about the Reaper.

Now this is the body being carried out of the restaurant.

We're back in the restaurant now, in a scene

that obviously never made it in the film.

The deputies are hearing how Frank Bannister was seen rushing out.

Magda's saying that he was acting in a very strange way.

Now the body is being taken out

of the museum and Frank realizes

through things he can hear the Deputy saying,

that he is now a suspect

for these murders.

And we run with the sarcophagus gag

of Frank hiding in the sarcophagus

being pushed by the ghosts, which is again,

something that ended up in the finished movie, pretty much in this form.

Out in the car park here things are a little different.

Frank's immediately accosted by a couple of sheriffs.

But the ghosts help him escape.

The Sheriff's a jumpy guy, he shoots.

Frank thinks he's gonna get hit,

but then a manhole cover comes up.

And as Frank runs the manhole cover floats

in front of him, deflecting the bullets.

We see it's Stuart actually carrying it.

I like this idea which was

an unconscious deputy who Cyrus is, like, puppeteering.

The Judge now joins Frank in the car as he's making his escape.

And we run with the gags that we used in the final film

of Cyrus and Stuart trying to pull the sparkplugs out of the engines

and Stuart getting sucked into the car.

Now as Frank speeds away from the museum

he suddenly sees Magda and Steve in his headlights

and they're, in fact, outside Magda's house.

He almost hits her and she's obviously very annoyed

and says that he's a suspect for these murders,

he should give himself up.

And while she's raving at him, he looks

and he sees a number, realizing that

she's indeed the next victim.

So despite the fact that Magda

obviously thinks that Frank's responsible for these deaths,

Frank knows that he's possibly gotta go back to her house

and save her, which is a whole sub-plot that we never shot.

You'll see that coming up in a minute.

And now we're into the scene with Milton Dammers arriving.

And this goes on into talking about the back-story of Frank

and how his wife died in an accident,

which, I think, is pretty much as we shot it.

So we'll just have a look at this.

One difference with the way it was

originally storyboarded is instead of

the knife being the murder weapon, it was gonna be a gun.

And we were gonna see Frank loading

a gun into the trunk of his car

with his name engraved on it.

And then we were gonna hear how his wife

was found dead in the forest with gunshot wounds.

Now this is the young reporter,

Steve Bayliss, who we find is in

Magda's bedroom having to succumb to her charms.

She heads out to the kitchen to get herself a drink

and starts to get freaked out by noises

you know, like, a little bit of wall paper ripples,

she hears creaks and groans.

The tension is starting to build in the scene

to the point that she wants to get out of the house

and she starts to

race towards the front door.

She runs towards the door

thinking she's been pursued by some unseen evil.

She opens the door, and there's a big fright, as Frank's standing there.

She, of course, thinks that Frank's there to do her some sort of harm

and tries to defend herself. Steve runs away in terror

as Frank says, "No, no, you've gotta listen to me

"you're gonna be the next victim." She doesn't.

She just picks up the phone, but then, suddenly, the Reaper attacks.

Frank manages to push her away from the Reaper

and we have a little sequence here where he struggles

to try and save her life.

Of course, the problem that Frank has

is that he can't make physical contact with the Reaper.

Every time he tries to grab him, he just passes through him.

But he can at least get Magda away

which is what he tries to do here.

The Judge makes a heroic last-minute rescue

where he starts blazing at the Reaper with his guns

and the Reaper gets hit, and falls backwards.

This is a gag that we used in the museum in the film,

but originally, this was the way it was gonna be

which is why we had to set up the ghost bullets

earlier, of course, being effective against ghosts.

So Frank and the Judge take Magda away in the car.

He just now has to try and get her away,

as far away as he can from the Reaper

who he knows now is gonna just pursue her

relentlessly.

The Judge, unfortunately, gets chopped in half

by the Reaper's scythe as it comes scooting through the car.

And this was a gag that we used in the museum, as well,

but then we ultimately cut it out of the film, but you'll be able to look at

what we did shoot of that in the documentary later on.

So now, we're into a sequence which is

reasonably similar to what is in the movie

of Frank just now having to drive crazily down this narrow road

with the Reaper on the roof of the car, the scythe under his chin,

trying to save Magda's life.

So Frank walks into

the Sheriff's office to give himself up the following morning.

A scene which is pretty much the same as what's in the movie.

The Judge is licked awake by Rustler.

He's lying on the road, realizing that he's been chopped in half

and he says, "You gotta take me to the cemetery. I'm a goner."

Jumps on Rustler's back.

We cut to the Lynskey house, and Lucy has just had a shower

and she's doing her hair in front of the steamed-up mirror

when the letters of her name are scrawled with an invisible hand.

She's starting to get freaked out and her husband's face

presses against the shower box.

The windows lock, the curtains go down.

He sits on the bed and pats the bed,

so it's, kind of, pretty freaky for her

and she jumps in the car and races away

and he is in the back of the car.

And he's pacing around the room, saying,

"You know, you gotta listen to me, Lucy,

"we gotta have a second chance."

This is a scene that we actually filmed

in a slightly different context

which you'll see in the special edition.

This interrogation scene is pretty much as was shot, I believe.

Again, not the most interesting thing to look at when you

haven't gotten any dialogue.

So Lucy returns to the Bartlett house

having received an urgent message on the phone

to come and help Patricia.

This was a scene similar to what we filmed, where Patricia is

really acting as if her mother is

the perpetrator behind all her problems.

She pulls out an old suitcase out of

behind, under her mother's bed,

and there's a whole lot of pills in it.

This never made it into the film,

but we had newspaper clippings in there instead.

But originally there was going to be pills and Patricia was going to say

she was getting drugged by her mother and acting like the victim.

They hear the old lady coming up the stairs

and so Lucy has to go and race to hide in the closet

just as she does.

In the movie, if you recall,

she finds the knife with Frank's initials on

and in this version, it was the gun

that was the murder weapon and she sees that up on the closet shelf.

So as Lucy comes down the stairs

there's hints of Wallpaper Man following her.

We filmed this in a slightly different way.

One of the real difficult problems

with drawing storyboards like this

is when this was being drawn

I didn't even know what the house was gonna look like.

It's one of the really tricky things.

You don't know what the set design is

and so it's hard to design the shots

and often, once you get on the set, you make modifications.

So Ray's empty carcass rolls onto the ground

and we cut to the Sheriff's office.

This was a scene that we ultimately filmed,

but cut out of the cinema release.

It is back in the special edition. If you've already seen it

you'll know what I mean.

The scene where the ghosts arrive to try and help Frank.

He's now been imprisoned

and they walk through the cells.

But to their shock, they find that Frank

can't actually see them anymore.

He seems to have lost his psychic ability temporarily.

The scene with Lucy in the cell

talking to Frank is very much as filmed.

But you'll see that the Reaper sequence coming up

where he attacks them inside the cell, was much, much more elaborate

in its storyboard conception than what we ultimately filmed.

Frank and Lucy's escape from their cell is pretty much as we

filmed it with a few modifications.

So here we are in the cryogenics lab

and this sequence plays pretty much as it does in the movie.

We're about to come to a scene where

the storyboards are much, much more elaborate

than what got filmed and this is the whole sequence

of Frank being a ghost.

I had intended this to be quite a long scene

and as it was, we... It got cut down for various reasons.

One, was obviously just the pace of the film.

Secondly, we were running out of time, we were behind schedule

and we were in danger of going over budget

if we didn't make some trims.

And so the sequence that runs

with Frank as the spirit, trying to chase after Lucy

became a little bit more simple.

As Dammers takes Lucy away in the patrol car

we immediately bring the Reaper on as a threat.

He starts to pursue the car

and Frank races out of the medical center

to see them driving away with the Reaper on their tail.

So he starts running very, very fast

and realizes they're about to go onto a freeway.

And this entire freeway scene never made it into the film.

It was never shot, although one or two of the gags

survived in a slightly more truncated way.

So as Frank punches the Reaper, we see glimpses

of monstrous faces below the cowl

that just come on with each punch

just for a flash.

A car sweeps Frank up into the sky, he, like, has to...

Materializes again and floats back down to Earth.

I really like the idea in this fight of playing

with the rubbery nature of ghosts

with their lightweight forms.

They can float up in the air in the slipstream of a car or a truck.

And here they are, like, Frank's sailing down and lands on the road.

And this was a gag that obviously did end up in the film.

I was determined to keep some of this in the movie.

It would've been fun to have shot it all,

but it would've taken us weeks.

This is another gag, where Frank throws himself on the ground

and gets flattened by a truck that ended up

in the movie in a very brief form.

I like the idea of this fight because it

was a chance to play with the ability

to run through cars and through buses.

It was also Frank's opportunity

to actually, physically fight the Reaper

which he was unable to do as a human being.

And we really milked it for all it was worth in this sequence.

This was the end of the scene where he

pins himself on the front of a truck,

but pushes the Reaper away with his feet.

The Reaper, ultimately, just sails away into the night

and Frank rides on the truck a little bit further

and picks up the cop car, driving across the far side of town

towards the cemetery.

So he decides to run to it. And he runs through houses

through people's dinner tables, and through roofs

and you can see what's happening here, going through walls.

And we were going to have this big, long...

This was a one-shot scene, where we just follow him

and the camera and him just passed through all sorts of houses

and buildings, and factories, and this, kind of, chase to get to this car.

Frank ultimately arrives at the cemetery,

throwing himself on the hood of the car

as Dammers drives in through the gates and parks up.

He looks in horror as the Reaper is

hitting across the rooftops

only to be grabbed by the Gatekeeper.

Now this is a scene you'll be able to look at in the documentary, as well

'cause we did film most of this.

And this is with the modified Gatekeeper design

which is different now to how it was

at the beginning of the storyboards.

The Judge, who, you'll remember

went to the cemetery on the back of the dog

makes a reappearance in the graveyard at this point in time.

And we get into this complicated bit of action with the dog,

with the Judge, with the Gatekeeper,

with the drill sergeant, with the Reaper.

It's all kind of happening.

A version of this scene was actually filmed

and we've kind of reassembled it

as best we could for the documentary.

Although the order is different,

the scene is pretty much as shot now, with Dammers

freaking Lucy out by showing her his scars.

Lucy jumping in the car and driving away to save Frank from the freezer

and Frank facing

the blobby, gloopy guy on the tombstone.

Now there's a shot coming up which I'm really fond of

which is where Frank goes into a coffin, sees a corpse

and he, kind of, propels himself through the ground

into a series of coffins.

We actually shot this shot. It didn't end up in the theatrical version

for pacing reasons, but you can see it in the documentary

in the deleted scenes section.

He carries on pushing himself through

the ground and ends up in the crypt

where he sees the blobs reforming into Johnny and the Reaper.

And this was another scene that's in the movie.

It was never as successful as what I hoped.

I wanted this

sort of blobby texture to kind of, like, pull Frank in

and encapsulate him, and we never

got that quite working well enough.

And that's it, that's as far as we got with our story boarding.

As we mentioned earlier

we actually ran out of time and we'd never storyboarded the last

you know, climatic, sort of, third act of the film.

So that was kind of interesting. I mean, I have

sort of forgotten half the stuff

that we storyboarded and some of it

would've been quite interesting, if we filmed it.

But you know, that, in a way, is the version

of THE FRIGHTENERS that never was.

But at least it exists as a sort of a cartoon, I guess.

Now, when you're writing a script,

sometimes you have actors in mind for roles and sometimes you don't.

It just depends. And so, it's useful for Fran and I if we actually have a face

to one of our characters

because there's two of us writing, we can imagine the same person,

which kind of makes some sense.

But as it was with THE FRIGHTENERS,

we didn't really think too much about casting.

We wrote the character

of Frank Bannister and of Lucy and the ghosts.

And we wrote them very much to function within the story that we were creating.

And we didn't actually have

a particularly strong idea of one actor or another.

But once we had this film underway

obviously it was the next problem we had to solve.

So we sat down with Bob

and we talked about ideas for actors.

And Michael Fox's name came up.

It was an idea that we liked very much

because Michael has a very rare ability

of balancing comedy and comic timing with drama.

You know, he is very good at both, which is a rare thing.

And Bob was obviously very useful at that time, because he said,

"Well, I've worked with Michael. I mean, you know, if you'd like

"I can give Michael a call and send him a copy of the script."

So I said, "Yeah, okay,

I'll take a look at it, but I'm not really in a mood to do much."

And then the script came

and, I mean, it was really good and really compelling.

It was obviously unlike anything that I had ever been offered before

and ever read before.

And it was clearly the work of a really degeneratively ill person.

Or people, as it turned out.

And I called Bob up and I said, "I don't know what to make of this.

"This could either be

"one of the most creative, interesting, innovative movies I've ever seen

"or it could be just the worst movie I've ever seen, depending on how it's done."

He said, "Well, you should go and see HEAVENLY CREATURES."

And at that time, it was about to play in Toronto

at the Toronto Film Festival, so...

Which is a short flight from where I live in Vermont.

So I said, you know, "Okay, great. I'll do that."

And I went up and I met Peter prior to seeing the film.

And we had a great conversation. I really liked Peter.

And I felt bad. I remember being in the meeting and feeling bad because

I wasn't predisposed to do the movie

and I thought, "I have met this guy and I'm gonna go and see his movie

"and then I'm, you know, probably not going to do his film."

And, you know, who wants that?

You know, who wants to be in that position?

So then we left and we went down to the theater to see the movie.

And about 10 minutes into HEAVENLY CREATURES, I just knew,

whatever he wanted to do.

He basically said, "Yeah, I'm on board. I'm yours."

Which was great, because, like, he was the first and only person

that we ever, you know, spoke to about that role.

And, you know, that big problem was, like, solved very, very easily.

I'm not sure that Frank Bannister has anything to do with Michael Fox

as a person.

But I think Michael has always had that

dark, quirky sense of humor that he and I share.

And he understood the character completely.

It was one of my better acting experiences

and one of the more challenging ones I've ever had.

And I felt completely supported by Peter and Fran

to try all kinds of different things. I mean, right down to the way I looked.

I figured, with Frank, you know, this is a guy who is essentially dead.

You know, he's dead for all intents and purposes.

He has no reason to live.

Everyone who is his friend is dead.

So that for him, the real world,

the world that you or I live in

is something he can't cope with or deal with.

So he's kind of like a hermit.

So I figured this guy would either have hair down to his ass

or just cut his own hair and cut it all off.

It is a very different type of character than we're used to seeing from Michael.

And so I think that's one of the really fun things about watching the movie.

I don't know. They say that sometimes

when you have a traumatic experience

that it can alter your perception.

Really, so after that you could just see spirits?

I mean, what happened?

How about you talk to Ray?

It was important that Lucy anchors the film in a reality

because there's so much weird stuff happening around her.

I mean, Frank is going through all sorts of weird stuff, he can see ghosts.

You know, there's the ghosts who are like characters in the film.

There's Johnny and Patricia, who are these psychos.

Everybody, you know, in the story, Dammers, the FBI guy...

You know, they're all kind of weird and out there.

And it was critical that we have, you know, one key character

who is like an anchor for the audience, someone who grounds the film in reality.

The activity is currently located where?

Well, I don't know. It just went quiet about five minutes ago.

Went quiet?

The dining room table spun in a counterclockwise direction?

I don't think that one happened, no.

The toilet seat lid banged up and down?

No.

- Did the bed levitate? - Yeah. Yeah, with me on it.

We auditioned maybe 30 or 40 actors to play Lucy

and we were starting to get a bit concerned.

And then we saw a tape

that was sent to us of Trini Alvarado doing an audition.

And, you know, we really liked her performance.

We really liked the quality.

It's not just a performance thing. It's the quality of who she is.

And it kind of, like, comes across onscreen,

a very rational calm with a, you know, lovely sense of humor.

So when I went to New Zealand and I met them, I was a little bit nervous.

But I had seen pictures of Peter from articles

of his other pictures and stuff, and I thought he had a very sweet face.

I'm reviving him at 9:00.

Why would we want to do that?

Lucy's character is a very active character.

And she isn't afraid of throwing a punch.

And I love that about the way Peter and Fran developed her.

She's a strong female figure.

And there are a lot of female characters, strong female characters in this.

And I love that about THE FRIGHTENERS.

You must think I'm very stupid.

Excuse me.

Trini, besides being a really talented actress

has this really great ethereal, kind of haunted look that

really always drew me in to her as...

Lucy as a character, and the movie,

and where my character was, and what he was supposed to be going through.

I could always find the answers in Trini's eyes and expressions.

Casting the ghosts was a lot of fun

because with the three ghosts, with Cyrus, Stuart and the Judge,

we wanted to cast actors that were gonna

basically help us with the script.

And because these were roles that had to be funny,

kind of wise-cracking guys coming out with good one-liners.

And Fran and I had a go at all this, you know, in our draft of the script.

But, you know, we're not great at doing that sort of writing.

And so we thought, if we cast, you know, like comics or stand up comics

or guys who... You know, actors who have good comic ability

then we're gonna get a lot of input into the script

and can hopefully, you know, make it funnier.

And so we started to look around for these sorts of guys.

And we found Jim Fyfe pretty quickly.

I auditioned a couple of times by myself.

And that was kind of like you were supposed to stand there

and just basically hallucinate.

'Cause they wanted to see actors who could, you know, act against a blue screen.

So you had to just stay there and go, like...

And what we actually did was, we kept

calling him back in to auditions, time and time again.

I guess at that point, they knew that they wanted me

but they couldn't actually tell me that.

So I just kind of had to keep coming back

and auditioning with different guys to play Cyrus.

Victoria Burrows, our casting director,

had mentioned Chi McBride's name early

but had said to us that Chi didn't want to come and audition.

He had read the script

and he didn't particularly like it or didn't think it was funny enough.

I thought that Cyrus' role was written a little stereotypical

and it was a little underwritten.

You know, I wasn't going

all the way over to New Zealand to do two lines.

So I decided that I didn't want to do it.

About two or three months later, I think we were getting really desperate

and, you know, we said to Victoria, "Look, have you got any more ideas?"

And she says, "Well, there is Chi. I could try Chi again."

And we said, "Well, just, you know, reiterate to him

"the fact that we want him to contribute to the script,

"that if he doesn't think it's funny enough now, then that's okay

"because it's our intention of getting as much input from him as we can

"and making it funnier."

Now, once I saw HEAVENLY CREATURES, I said,

"Maybe I might want to work with this guy."

So, you know... But I still was a little worried.

And the only way I agreed to go into the audition

is if I could go in and do pretty much whatever I wanted to do.

He was very, very funny. He was improvising.

He wasn't even sticking to our script.

Why are you always letting him scare you? You the ghost.

Look, man, I'm not worried about going back to the cemetery, okay?

First of all, two reasons.

Death was the best thing to ever happen to me, 'cause I had bad credit.

Second of all, there's more than 15% more leg room in my casket

than there is in the trunk of that car.

So you can stay here whining and complaining and getting mad and stuff.

But I'm getting what I want. I'm gonna be riding in the front.

And besides, I'm getting ready to play some music. I need to relax.

I'm gonna tell you, if you lock me up in that trunk again,

I'm getting some more black ghosts, and we're gonna march,

we're calling Jesse, we're gonna have the African American Apparition Coalition.

We can't work under these conditions.

And you're gonna be in a lot of trouble with a lot of black ghosts.

There ain't nothing worse than a bunch of brothers

that's pissed off and already dead.

So I would advise you that you just re-upholster your seats

and get some plastic, do whatever you gonna do.

B! B, is that you?

Benny, my man.

Hey, man, how did you get busted again?

You know what? You really need to change your haircut.

You're getting a little long in the back, Andy.

Why don't you let me trim it?

You know something, Benjamin, I've been meaning to tell you,

you're going down a very crooked road.

You don't want to end up another statistic, another African American male

stuck behind bars, like Mike Tyson.

You don't want to be sitting back there, doing 1,000 push ups a day,

and 555 sit-ups a day,

and you know you have to change your name, 'cause Mike is a Muslim now.

Now it's Mike X.

Peter Jackson once said that if I didn't get the job

he was just gonna take everything that I said in the auditions

and just put it in the script.

You dirty bastard.

I never met Chi before, you know, on the plane down there.

And we just hit it off immediately.

He's great. He's really, really a funny guy.

He's a terrific actor, and he's just got a great philosophy.

We had a blast working together.

- I love you, man! - Don't touch my leg. Don't touch my leg.

Because people will see this, and the next thing you know

I'll be, you know, doing those kind of movies where people are like,

"Well, is he really... I don't know what he is, but I love him."

"I'm such a big, strong black ghost. You know what I'm saying?"

A lot of my work with them, they weren't on camera.

And they didn't do their work until later.

And yet there wasn't a day when those guys didn't really bust their humps, you know,

to provide me with an idea of what this scene was gonna be

and what they were gonna do.

And I always remember being really moved by that and appreciative of it.

Can Marion Barry help me?

The character of the Judge was another difficult one to cast.

And it was difficult in a different sense, because with the Judge, we were using

a lot of prosthetic makeup

that was basically gonna cover his face. Like, whoever the actor was

was gonna have nothing visible apart from his eyes

because there was so much makeup on.

And yet, you know, we wanted a character and a personality

to project through the rubber.

And, you know, some actors kind of get buried in that thing

and you don't ever see them again.

This town is in deep trouble.

One of the problems with auditioning the Judge

was that we didn't have the makeup actually ready for them to wear

because it has to be made, you know, for the actor, the specific actor.

And so we were auditioning Judges without any makeup on

and having to imagine what they were like.

John Astin did a really delightful audition,

where it was clear, you know, with his incredibly expressive eyes

that no matter what you put on his face,

you were still gonna get this wonderful character and personality coming through.

I ain't got no more hauntings left in me.

Why, hell, I could hardly rustle up a scare.

I think the Judge

represents a kind of

character that we're all familiar with

in Western films.

And this...

I think this is a kind of transplanting

of this kind of character

into, uh.

Into an environment with which he's completely

unfamiliar, ill at ease.

I don't think he...

I don't think he adjusts very well to modern life.

We got Rick Baker to design us the makeup of the Judge.

He was very happy to work with John Astin

and, you know, to actually come up with

a look for this character.

And that was all done at Rick's studio in Los Angeles

and John would go in for various fittings

and, you know, developing this makeup.

And Rick would send me videotapes and photographs

and show me what it was like.

And when John came out to New Zealand to do the film,

Rick sent Brian Penikas to apply the makeup

which, at that point in time, was about a five-hour makeup, I think

for John to have to go through.

He had to have, you know, his head covered with the Judge's sort of, like, wig,

and the makeup was partly prosthetics and partly stipple

which is where you apply the rubber latex to the actual skin

and stretch it and relax it

so it gets wrinkles, you know, appearing in it.

And so it was a very time-consuming makeup.

I'd been on stage thousands of times.

I'd been in many films and television shows.

And I've done hundreds of different makeups.

But nothing really compares to this.

This goes way beyond.

And it wasn't until we did the first makeup tests that I began

to see and feel exactly who this character was.

The idea of casting actors who could contribute to the script

you know, really paid off for us,

especially during rehearsals. We rehearsed

for about two weeks before we started shooting.

We flew down to New Zealand a couple of weeks

prior to the beginning of shooting.

And we go over to Peter and Fran's house.

They have this great house on the water.

And they have this room at the back

it's just all videos and, you know, big, comfortable, fluffy furniture.

They all flake out and watch movies there.

And all the actors gathered in there

and we just read through all the scenes and just improvised things

and made suggestions and came up with lines.

And in a lot of cases

we had to re-vernacularize their writing

because they'd written certain phrases and certain ideas

in Kiwi-speak,

that we, as American actors, knew that American audiences wouldn't relate to.

Peter and Fran were really great about

soliciting our ideas.

And Michael, too,

because, you know, in a film like this, when you're working with a big star,

the big star, you know, kind of gets to say what's gonna go on to some extent, too.

It was really, like, a lot of fun, because we were just...

We had the chance to be as wild and over-the-top as we cared to be.

And, you know, he was really stressing that it was more important for us to go

as far over-the-top as we possibly could and let him reel us back in,

than for us to just be timid and scared and trying to be safe.

So we just pretty much did whatever we wanted

and we just said the first things that came to our mind

within the context of the scene.

And a lot of the stuff stuck, and Peter kept it. And they would videotape it,

and then they would go and write the dialogue,

and the next day, we'd have new pages.

Like, every day we would have a different color page,

and we were, like, running out of colors.

The thing that I remember that was really odd

was they didn't have a tape recorder. So what he did was he took his camcorder

and he put it in the middle of the floor

and used it just to record sound.

Which I thought was really funny for a guy who was

pretty much of a, you know, self-confessed tech weenie

and gadget freak, that he couldn't come up with a tape recorder.

So let's just have a go.

Okay, so you're stuck in the wall...

Maybe we'll start with that line at the top of the page.

"Loosen up, man. Come on, particlize." Or whatever it is in the end.

And just go through into the music thing

and we'll try and snatch you a couple of bits of dialogue if we can.

It would be great if we just got stuck

and we just stopped

and the argument just continued with me in the door, making whatever point.

And then he goes. And then I'm still stuck, and I forget that I'm stuck.

What I'll do actually then is

after this line, whatever it's gonna be,

"Come on, you could have swung cupboards around,

"flash a few lights. Give me something to work with.

"Cause I'm on my way. Give me something to work with."

"Come on, Stuart. In or out? In or out, man?"

"That ain't right, man.

"Don't take your frustrations out on Stuart.

"You know the boy can't help getting stuck. The guy's anal-retentive."

"I'm very upset.

"Now, can someone please help me?"

Stuart will think Frank's gone.

- Yeah, he's gone. - But he should start to really bitch

about the way that Frank's making you guys work.

That business partners thing is good.

I mean, that would be the sort of thing that, you know, Stuart might well say.

And we're supposed to be his business partners.

What a joke!

Okay, we still have a problem

as to where the second scene goes, though.

Because at the moment, we have the mail.

Then we have the talk about the creditors.

Then we had the ghosts doing, like, this gag.

- No, no, no. - We don't have that?

No, we have the talk about the creditors,

we have the Judge saying he's too old and he's heading back to the cemetery.

- What happens is this... - That puts Frank in a reflective mood.

And he ends up in his room

and then the guys burst in and scare the hell out of him.

So this stuff goes on in the morning.

Frank goes out to the mailbox. He gets the thing. He goes...

He's out there with his coffee, and he gets it and he goes, "Right.

"We've gotta have this conversation right now."

He goes in and says, "Yo, everybody. Sit down. Listen.

"These are bills, these are bills. This is my situation.

"Blah, blah, blah. You got it?"

And then he has a conversation with the Judge, who is saying,

"You know what? I can't play this game anymore.

- "That's just too much for me." - Yeah.

Then I kind of go away, and I'm having a moment.

And then they do this thing and I say,

"Fuck you. Don't ever do that." And they're like, "Touched a button there."

I think we can still

probably play it the way we've got it is,

we end the moment, and they go, "Touchy, touchy."

And then we just go to the dog howling.

It's got a good mood in the driveway the next morning.

"What's up with Rustler?" The Judge is heading for the cemetery.

Because I still like the visual thing

of them sitting in the car, watching the funeral procession pass by,

which I think is... "You know who's doing this, Frank."

I mean, I think, we can't get anything better than that,

of actually seeing the thing...

But that's the point of it, the point of the compaction

or whatever you're looking for here, is to find the strongest attitude.

And that's the strongest attitude to be,

to be there, to have that stuff happening in the background.

There was another element of improvisation

that really happened on the set while we were shooting, as well,

because, often, especially in the case of Chi McBride,

we'd get to certain lines

when, you know, we'd have something in the script,

and we'd say to Chi, "Well, have you got any other ideas for this?

"Just for this line. Anything. Can you come up with something funnier?"

And he says,

"Yeah, I think I can, but just roll the camera and we'll see what happens."

And action.

That's it! You can kiss my ass, Frank!

Ain't gonna be no more hauntings until we get some gun control in the house!

Action.

You know, one of the reasons I was glad I was dead

was 'cause I thought I wouldn't have to worry about getting killed no more!

Action.

You know, you ain't even safe around this place when you're dead!

You senile old bastard!

Action.

Fuck you, Judge.

You know, if I wanted to get shot at every day,

I'd move my black ass to Los Angeles.

They covered me with a blue, like, cape.

Like a poncho.

I delivered my lines

and it gave the appearance that I was just appearing from a drain pipe.

Set.

And action.

Yo, Frank! How's it hanging?

- I don't know, Cyrus. - You tell me.

Yeah, what's 10 inches long and white? Right. Nothing.

Hey, come on, I told you guys, get the hell out of my plumbing.

Hey, look, come on, Frank!

Hey, look, we want to call a meeting, man. We gotta rap.

Hey, Cyrus. I gotta take a leak. And I'm not getting out of the shower.

Goodbye.

A small town called Lyttelton

which is in the South Island of New Zealand, just outside of Christchurch

was chosen as a primary location for Fair water, where our film's set.

And we spent about five weeks in Lyttelton

in a very, very wet winter of 1995,

shooting any sequences that were, like, outside the town

in the High Street and in the cemetery.

We had to make this small New Zealand town look like America, of course.

And so we had to find American vehicles

because we drive on the other side of the road.

We were lucky that Christchurch, which was very close by

is the base for Operation Deep Freeze, the American Antarctic base.

And so there's a lot of American personnel at the base

who have brought their cars over.

So we were able to borrow a lot of their vehicles for the street scenes.

We had to do a lot of work on the street signs,

you know, just to generally make this place look like small-town America.

I think the hardest thing is

the logistics of having a movie being shot

halfway around the world in New Zealand.

But in a strange way, it gives the movie

a wonderfully unique look

and a very important surreal quality

which is appropriate for the tone of the movie.

But it's very hard to make a movie when it's all being done,

you know, in a 14-and-a-half-hour airplane flight away.

- How old are you? - How old am I? I'm 106.

Well, a hundred... In dog years. I'll be 34 next week.

Two weeks.

Any other questions? Yeah?

You have to get it right?

You have to do it over and over again

so they can get the right one?

Yeah, I know. It's silly, isn't it?

We do it over and over again

because, see, there's camera guys and sound guys

and there's people who are in charge of making sure

that every time we do it, it looks the same.

- You happy now? - Clock ticking!

And there are people who are in charge of the lights.

And there are people who are in charge of the cars and the people.

And so what has to happen in every take is every single one of those people

has to get their job done right.

And usually it's my fault. And I don't get my job done right.

But that's what we do. We do it every time

and every time after it's done we look and go, "Are you happy? Are you happy?"

And if everybody gets what they want, then we can do the next thing.

Ready and action!

The location at Lyttelton was also used

for scenes with Frank Bannister's house up on the hill above the town.

We built the house so that we could shoot it inside it and outside it

because the idea with the house is that

Frank had got halfway through building it when he was a young architect.

His wife had died, and he had sort of stopped any further work on it.

So it was, like, supposed to be a half-finished house.

It meant that we had these big windows that he had made,

that hadn't got any glass in them.

We wanted a lot of the outside

to be present when we were inside the house.

Cigars?

You've been promising to buy me a box of cigars.

Cyrus, I hate to break this to you, but you're dead.

Of course, THE FRIGHTENERS has a lot of special effects,

a huge number of special effects

which is part of the fun for me, because I just love doing effects.

It's like being a magician. It's like being a kid in a toy shop, in a way.

I'm very fortunate, because down here in New Zealand, I have

an involvement in a special effects company called WETA.

And so I'm able to have,

I guess, a lot more hands-on involvement in effects

then what a director would probably be used to overseas.

WETA comprises two departments.

One of them is the creature shop

which makes miniatures and monsters and various things.

And that's headed by Richard Taylor.

This is the sculpting room. We start our designs

by coming up with a number of drawings, which we show to the director,

then take them a little bit further into little three-dimensional maquettes

which are small sculptures that he can then look at and view.

And finally, when we've got a design that he likes,

we then begin the task of sculpting it up in clay or Plasticine.

As you follow me around, you can see a number of examples

of things we've got on the go at the moment.

Richard and I go back to MEET THE FEEBLES.

He worked on it, built some of the puppets for me

and he did a lot of effects on BRAINDEAD and HEAVENLY CREATURES.

The other half of WETA is the digital department,

the computer department.

And that really came together on HEAVENLY CREATURES.

We did about 30 CG, you know, computer-generated shots, for that movie.

And we only had one computer at the time.

But at least we got the hang of how to do the stuff

and we sort of, you know, solved some of the problems ourselves

and figured out the basic process.

So, when it came time to do THE FRIGHTENERS,

I was very keen to do all the effects down in New Zealand.

It's not just a sort of ego thing because it's my company

or anything like that. It's really a practical thing for me

because, as the director of the film, I have to have such a close contact

with the effects to make sure that they are done as efficiently as possible.

If you've got over 500 shots, as we had on THE FRIGHTENERS,

you can't afford for people to be going off in the wrong direction for too long.

I've always got to look at what's happening and just steer people the right way

so that we can be as efficient as possible.

They can get that shot finished and move on to the next.

I mean, what's he gonna look like?

Because THE FRIGHTENERS has so many computer shots,

I think it would be quite good if we just had a look at that process.

It begins on film. We shoot the film as we would normally,

you know, with a 35-millimeter camera.

And then that piece of film, the negative has to go

through the system of being scanned into a computer.

So, we should probably find someone who can explain that to us.

Right. This is where it's really happening.

I'm not sure what the rest of the people were telling you

but, in point of fact

this facility right here, the machine room at WETA Digital

is the center of digital activity here.

There's actually three distinct processes that you have to go through

when you're working on digital effects for a film.

The first is the actual digitization of the scanned elements.

The second is the processing that happens throughout the facility.

And the third is the recording of those elements finally out to film.

Normally, what happens is this unit actually takes filmed elements

that we have received edited decision lists for,

and digitizes them into a format that is readable by the machines in the facility.

Typically, a scanned element at 2K resolution

is about nine megabytes' worth of information.

In typical Hollywood terms,

a digital effect is considered about five seconds long,

about five discreet elements, that might be a background play,

a composited element on top of that,

a miniature, a computer model, those kinds of elements.

It typically takes between one and a half to two gigabytes of storage space

to store those elements. One shot in this facility

can take as much as 10 gigabytes of storage space.

To address that need, at the height of THE FRIGHTENERS

when we were really crunching through the shots,

we had almost 1.6 terabytes of disk space available throughout the facility.

The last step, after the actual digital processing,

is the recording of the final digital images onto film.

That happens here. This is a Solitaire Cine Ill recorder.

We actually have two of them in the facility.

It takes about 35 to 36 seconds to actually record

the finished digital image back out into film.

That happens, it's cued up here by an operator, shot onto this camera,

we send it off to the lab for processing, and then check the print.

How's that?

I know that there was some concern from Universal

as to whether we could actually do all the visual effects in New Zealand

which was fair enough. I mean, you know, this is a studio

that's used to dealing with the very biggest American companies

and were naturally afraid.

So we devised a little strategy amongst ourselves

that we would finish one of the ghost scenes as quickly as we could.

And this coincided quite well

with Bob Zemeckis' first visit down to New Zealand,

which was about two or three weeks after we began shooting.

We're trying to pick out the West Coast town that this is.

Shoot, shoot, shoot.

Wait till you hear the story about...

- It's like a Morro Bay. - Morro Bay with a little surreal snow.

And a port.

I was wondering if I was gonna see you or not today.

Jesus Christ. Does this happen every time?

- How are you? - Good to see you.

And Bob was gonna come down

just to have a look and say hi to people

and to see how we were going.

And we thought, "Wow, wouldn't it be great if we had

"one of the ghost scenes actually finished to show Bob at that stage?"

Scene 28 was a good scene to work on

because it really extended us into all sorts of areas.

It contained a variety of different effects that we would use later in the film.

Obviously, the ghosts were there, so we had to develop our whole ghost look.

We would like to cruise with some style, man.

You know, you guys left me high and dry tonight.

I get to the house, nothing's happening. Couldn't believe it.

Hey!

Ultimately, it was a little hurried

because we were still experimenting with how the ghost effect would look

over a variety of backgrounds.

We only had two weeks to do it

because we'd only just shot this footage, and then he was arriving.

So the guys, like, worked around the clock and they did all the shots.

There's, like, 12 or 14 shots in the scene.

That fellow takes us totally for granted.

And we're supposed to be his business partners.

What a joke!

Bob turned up in New Zealand, and we sat him down to show him Scene 28.

He didn't realize that all the computer guys had been working for two weeks

with virtually no sleep to get this scene finished.

But we ran it for him, and he just watched it quietly

and then, at the end, I remember he turned to us and he said,

"Well, guys, it looks like we've got a real movie on our hands."

And I remember that was, you know, really exciting

because it just told everybody that he was impressed.

And he is the guy you want to impress.

THE FRIGHTENERS has a lot of computer graphic shots.

I mean, more than I've ever had in any of my movies.

They are...

I mean, it's a movie that is a computer graphics extravaganza.

You're so tight you can play "Pick up sticks" with your butt cheeks.

Loosen up. Just particlize. There you go.

Damn!

The problem at that stage became not one of, you know,

"Are we gonna do the effects?"

Because I think it was pretty much decided that we would be doing all the effects.

But the problem was just the sheer size of the job,

the recruiting of more people, getting more computers

and making sure that the facility was able to handle it all.

One of the things that we decided to do was to

ask Wes Takahashi to join the team as visual effects supervisor.

He was based in the States

and he'd worked at ILM for, you know, some 12 or 15 years.

And we thought that somebody of his experience

was gonna be very important in guiding us through this

incredibly complex year that was in front of us.

The one shot that inspired me

for the most part, to come down here, was one in which Cyrus

walks towards the camera and his head envelops a light bulb.

You gotta just walk up to Frank, just look him in the eye and just say,

"Frank, give me what I want or I'm gonna bust your ass!"

And my whole head was glowing.

And when I spoke, you know, my eyes were really bulging,

and I was really, really upset,

and I delivered a line and it came out in light beams.

It was unbelievable. It was fantastic. And they cut it out of the film.

I can stretch my body out to 30 feet in length using Hindu breathing techniques.

I really got to say, I think that's what got me the job, you know?

And then it was cut from the film, so it was kind of a comedown for me

but I'm glad it's back in the LaserDisc.

I wanted the ghosts to look like traditional ghosts

because, you know, in a movie like this

where you've got so many shots of ghosts in the film

and they are a fundamental part of the movie,

they are characters in the film,

I didn't want to have something that was gonna, like, confuse audiences,

something that didn't really look ghost-like,

you know, something kind of weird

and people would be saying, "Are these ghosts or are they..."

At the same time, I also didn't want to do a shortcut

where we have the ghosts appearing solid

so we can, like, film them in the same room, you know.

I mean, that's fine, and it demands a leap of imagination,

but I wanted our film to be a little bit more straightforward than that.

We kind of imagine that ghosts are transparent

and they have a little glow around them.

I think, most people have this image of what a ghost looks like in their mind.

And I wanted just to target just directly at that image,

so there was no thinking involved.

You could just listen to the dialogue they were saying,

and watch the movie, and follow the story,

and not be confused about who these guys or what these guys were.

They're ghosts, but they take on their personality

and their shape is of their corpse

that is also buried and rotting in the ground.

They come from different times, and they have different looks,

and they're a little bit creepy, but they're a little bit fun.

And, you know, so there is quite a bit of an edge to them, too.

So you take them really real.

So you're not sitting there watching anything that's, you know,

100% light.

But at the same time, it's not so dark that it's repulsive in any way.

So it's a wonderful blend of that.

And I think that that's something that's really interesting

about the way the film looks.

What are the physics of a ghost? Can it pass through objects?

And if it can pass through objects, how come it can stand on the floor?

And all of these had to be defined with our ghosts.

And do they have... Do they cast shadows?

Are shadows cast upon them?

Are they illuminating?

Do they produce their own light?

How much transparency do they have? Are they three-dimensional?

Should they distort the backgrounds?

Because they were transparent,

they tended to inherit the colors of what was behind them.

We could see what was behind them.

So, if we put one against a dark background and one against a bright red wall,

we'd see some differences.

But we wanted to keep them looking the same throughout the movie.

One of the things we developed with the software here

was the ability to change their colors.

This is our ghost control program, called Setspook

that we used to define the look of the ghosts for every single shot.

We can control various things here, like the size of his glow,

how strong they were on the screen, their color,

how much the background got distorted through them.

In addition to the standard ghost shot,

where they're just standing in the room talking,

there's a number of shots where special things have to happen to the ghosts.

One of the most common techniques was called rotoscoping,

which is how you make a ghost pass through a doorway

or fall through the floor.

Basically, the rotoscoper has to draw a little line

around their body using a mouse

and literally animates them through the floor, frame by frame.

It's a very time-consuming and tedious process.

The rotoscoping was relatively straightforward.

But we occasionally had some complicated shots

where 3D animation had to be added to the two-dimensional ghosts.

A good example of that is the shot

where Stuart has arrived back at Frank's house

and he's feeling carsick, and his cheeks are swelling with ectoplasmic vomit.

I built a 3D Stuart head,

and then we projected the footage onto that.

The catch was that that had to be match-moved to Stuart's actions,

over the course of a very long shot.

Ultimately, it was a match move that had to be,

the angle and position and size of Stuart's face.

The computer model that I had made had to be matched to the live action.

Once that was done, then it was relatively easy

to be able to inflate the cheeks up and back down again.

The ears were also match-moved

so that, then using a dynamics program we've got, called Dynamation,

it was easy enough to have it emit a whole lot of particles

with the characteristics of puke that,

puke in zero gravity has, and there was gravity pointing up.

The particles, once they were emitted, wanted to flock together.

But the catch was that, since they were coming out so fast,

for every frame of blobs, we had to actually produce 10 frames

so that we could combine them all together go give us motion-blurred blobs.

So, ultimately, about 5,000 frames of blobs were rendered

which was the other reason why that shot took so long.

Occasionally, we had to build a 3-D model of an entire ghost.

For instance, the scene where Stuart gets fired out of the exhaust pipe of the car.

That was quite a simple model that Matt Aitken built.

He was able to animate the wire-frame models,

sort of like oozing out of the exhaust pipe

and then take photographic textures of the actor

and paste that over the top of the wire frame model.

And with enough motion blur,

you know, you just see this computer-generated ghost whizzing past.

And we get away with it, 'cause it's so quick.

Another ghost shot which, you know, needed something extra

is the one where Frank sprays fly spray into Stuart's face.

I know that my initial idea with that shot was something very simple

and probably rather boring, where the fly spray, like, hits his head,

and it just blows his head into the air in a sort of swarm of particles,

and it just comes back together.

That was kind of, like, all I could think of.

Peter was a little unsure about exactly what he wanted to see in this shot.

I had a couple of ideas. We played around with it for

about a day, I believe.

And at the end of that, we showed it to him,

and, pretty much, it was a first-time final.

We both just started getting into it and got little bit carried away.

And so we decided to go very gory

because we both figured that we were working for Peter Jackson

so he would have to like it, one way or the other.

And it's like a hole blows in the middle of Stuart's head

and his eyeballs are hanging off little,

sort of bits of tendons, and his tongue is flapping.

It was, like, way beyond anything I ever imagined.

And I just thought, "Wow, this is great."

And that's what I love about working with creative people

is that the more of those sort of ideas that can be thrown into the mix,

that's better than stuff that I can come up with,

it just makes the film so much better.

Probably my most favorite shot in the movie,

in terms of a special effects shot is

the one in the kitchen where Michael kills a fly.

There's a fly buzzing around and he slaps it

and a little dead body of a fly kind of falls out of his hand.

And that's just Michael miming the action and doing the thing with his hands.

And then we added a little CG fly into the shot afterwards.

And it's such a simple shot that people don't think of being a special effect.

You know, I mean, I'm sure a lot of people thought we trained

flies to actually, like, you know, get right into the target zone

that Michael could slap them.

We occasionally used to have a mix of CG and puppetry.

For instance, where Stuart gets hit by the reaper's scythe

and he falls to the floor and collapses.

I wanted, you know, an effect of Stuart's carcass

just imploding on itself,

as if all the ectoplasmic life force had suddenly dispersed.

And that was achieved by starting out with a shot of Jim Fyfe

falling to his knees, and he'd just drop below the level of the camera.

And then we would pick him up again as he fell to the floor, we'd tilt down.

But at this stage, we had switched to a rubber puppet.

We would inflate it with a vacuum cleaner,

and then on "Action"

quickly put the vacuum cleaners onto reverse

and suck all the air out, giving the feeling

that the scythe had punctured Stuart's head

and squashed the character to the ground, making him look like a flat pancake.

What we were able to do was to have, you know,

our computerized, ghosted Stuart

with a CG reaper hitting the top of his head.

And as the camera tilts down, we changed to the rubber model

that Richard had made halfway through the shot

and that's what we see being sucked down to the floor.

The Judge was a ghost who did need very special treatment.

Particularly, in the shot where he walks across the room and we see very clearly

that his torso is missing, that he just has a skeletal remains,

you know, a spine and a rib cage.

Frame by frame, it had to be positioned

and bent to match the Judge's movement.

And that was probably the longest part of the shot,

was just locking that spine in there

as he came towards us, turned around, and sat down.

It could soon be time to lay my bones.

No, you're my go-to guy.

Without you, I'm out of business, Judge.

Frightening.

It is a young man's game, Frank.

I ain't got no more hauntings left in me.

I mean, that's a great shot, but it did take a hell of a lot of time to do.

And perceptive members of the audience

may notice that the Judge has his coat buttoned up

throughout the rest of the film.

So we didn't need to have to do that every time we saw him.

Every time we have a ghost scene

where we have, like, Michael J. Fox, for instance,

you know, talking with the ghosts, which happens a lot in the movie,

we had to shoot Michael and the ghosts separately.

You know, Michael on the stage by himself,

and then the ghosts in front of a blue screen by themselves.

That takes, you know, twice as long as a normal scene to shoot

because you've got two different bits to do

before you can actually put them both together.

And then, what also increases the time

is the fact that, if you want to move the camera,

if you want to do anything where the camera's moving around

with the actors during the course of these ghost scenes,

you have to have it controlled by a motion-control unit

which is, like, something you mount the camera on,

this big, robotic machine, basically,

that moves the camera, pans it, tilts it

and tracks it along and cranes it up and down.

And those camera moves are recorded by a computer.

So if you tracked along and panned with Michael,

then, two or three months later, you set up the same rig again

in front of a blue screen and you pan and track with the ghosts,

and the camera moves at exactly the same speed. It doesn't alter at all.

And so, you can then put the two pieces of film together

and they stay locked together.

$15,000, guys. I need it quick.

When we did the BACK TO THE FUTURE ones,

we had to do all of those elements on the same day.

So whatever it was that we shot,

whether it was, in BACK TO THE FUTURE Ill, for example,

it was me as three different people in the same scene.

So I'd do it in makeup and all that stuff

and I'd do one character and then I'd go away and change,

and I'd come back and I'd do it again as another character,

go away and change, come back.

And it made for long, excruciatingly uncomfortable days sometimes.

But they couldn't take a chance

that there'd be a earthquake or something that would bump or jar the camera.

But by the time that we did THE FRIGHTENERS,

the technology had improved to the point where

you could do it months later. It would remember exactly what to do.

For me it was real helpful, because I could sense when it was moving,

when the camera was moving independently

and I could hear it

and sometimes see it peripherally, and knew that, that was then a cue

that the action had progressed,

and so I knew from rehearsal what was now happening.

If the camera is starting to go this way, I think, "Okay, now, this is where

"the ghosts start to go across the room."

It's amazing. It's amazing technology.

We were very lucky with motion control

because these big, cumbersome bits of machinery are so slow to use,

and I know that in the States, it's quite common

that you can only get one or two shots a day done.

And we were lucky.

We could usually get six or seven motion-control shots in a day

because we were using a rig that was invented

by a New Zealand grip called Harry Harrison.

And his rig was based on a regular dolly

that he'd converted and he'd added motion-control motors to it,

all these drive belts,

and he'd sort of built this thing himself, basically, in his workshop.

That fellow takes us totally for granted.

So motion control was essential,

'cause I obviously wanted to move the camera a lot.

This time-consuming process

meant that we had to have seven months to shoot the film.

It was as simple as that.

Occasionally, it was difficult to shoot the ghost actors

against blue screen in the studio

because sometimes our shots were

shots of a ghost walking up difficult terrain,

like in the cemetery in Lyttelton, especially

where we wanted to see the feet contacting with the ground.

Good, good. Slow down.

The way we overcame that was to

shoot the ghosts against blue screen on the location.

Of course, this added another complication to the mix,

because now, you know, the guys carrying the blue screen

had to race around behind the actor, and sometimes it got kind of difficult.

I remember there was a couple of moments,

where they collided with a shop frontages

in Lyttelton High Street.

I think the most difficult aspect of the whole motion control

blue screen side of things for the actors was the timing.

Especially the ghost actors. They had it worse

because when we were shooting Michael,

we would be following him around the room,

he'd be doing his actions

and we would be recording the camera movement with a computer.

And then, when it came time to shoot the ghosts,

what they were acting to was a prerecorded camera move.

Eyeline change.

You, there, go over. Now, mister!

YOU! Hey!

So, you as an actor, now, all of a sudden...

The camera's not following your moves

but you're trying to make it look like it's following your moves

because it's on a preset thing.

So, if you're early or late to your mark,

you know, it's, "Okay, we got to try it again."

So, that's how you get into stuff like take 42.

I want to kill her now, Patty. That will give us 41.

That's eight clear of Gacy.

Another nine, and I won't be able to...

It's difficult for the actors to shoot this type of scene

because, of course, what they're used to doing on a set

is to basically have each other to bounce off.

And, you know, actors feed off each other to get energy for their own performance.

And so, you know, when you have interplay between characters,

it's like, you know, it's obviously great if everybody's in the same room

doing it together, because they are helping each other.

In the case of THE FRIGHTENERS, we had to take all the ghosts away,

and Michael had to do this himself, and had to keep his energy levels up.

And he had to absolutely be performing as if they were right there.

And then the ghosts had to do the same thing.

They didn't have Michael in the blue screen.

They had to act to little sticks and pieces of tape, as well.

- Come on, let's go, man. - Frank, Frank.

- Frank, did you hear what I said? - Frank, snap out of it, man.

Wait, wait, wait.

I mean, people often ask me, you know, "It must have been

"really difficult for the actors without having each other there."

I think to a certain extent it is, but on the other hand,

you know, actors are used to pretending.

I mean, that's what they are paid to do. They are professional pretenders.

Pretending that there is a ghost here

or pretending that things are happening around me that aren't,

it's just another... It's just an extension of acting.

One of the difficult things...

I think the worst thing I could say about acting to ghosts,

or acting to things that aren't there is that a lot of times, I get bad headaches

because you'd be focusing on a piece of space.

You're not looking at a still object

or an animate object.

You're looking at a place in space.

And it's not like you can just turn

in the direction of, let's say

that wall over there, and look at that

because when the final print is done,

it will look like you're looking through that person or past that person,

instead of at that person. So you have to focus on nothing,

like right here, and you feel like you're going cross-eyed.

I mean, many days I would go home with a migraine headache

because, you know, I've been focusing on nothing all day.

To me, that was not that difficult

because it's just going back to

a very basic level of play.

You know, like my little girl does.

You know, when you say "dragon," she sees a dragon.

Doesn't have to be a dragon there. It could be a tree, it could be nothing.

And you just go back to that level of pure pretend.

I mean, it's when you have actual things and people that you have to react to

that you run into problems.

Compared to what Trini had to do, it was fairly easy,

because what Trini had to do was,

she had to interact with somebody

who's interacting with things that weren't there

and she was not aware of what wasn't there.

So, it's even more of a suspension of disbelief

and even more of a challenge.

She had the most difficult, I think, role in the film.

It was also challenging to be attacked

by ghosts and things that weren't there when they really weren't there.

I was being choked by a computer graphic.

And just reacting to that, just choking myself, basically.

Lucy!

Release!

I always felt like the crew was laughing at me.

And I think they were.

Doing cameos in my movies is just a fun thing I do.

It's like the old Hitchcock

you know, gag of being in your own movies.

It also just makes the day

a fun day for the crew as well

to have the director walking around in some stupid costume.

And in THE FRIGHTENERS, it was on Lyttleton High Street

and I was this heavy-metal biker guy, and I had these fake

rings that we made out of a bit of bent wire

that had been snipped with wire cutters, and they were really sharp.

I had to stick them in my lips, and it was quite painful.

Had to spend most of the day dressed like this

because I have to get into my costume at the beginning of the day

and that's it for the rest of the day.

It just happened to be the one day

in the whole movie that the production had also decided

to bring TV crews onto the set. I didn't realize this.

And so...

They were filming, you know,

me directing the movie and this is the way I was dressed.

A couple of the TV items that went out

didn't actually mention that this was my costume, and so

I was thinking, "Oh no, what are my parents going to think?

"They're gonna see this on TV and think that their son has gone weird."

And it was kind of embarrassing.

How am I supposed to take the director seriously when he's dressed like that?

When it came time to cut the movie for the cinemas

I just looked at it and I thought, "Well, this is just a little bit self-indulgent."

So, I was, you know, man enough

to cut myself out of the film.

Certainly cut the close-up out of the film, anyway.

Asshole.

Actually, I'm not the only Jackson who appears in THE FRIGHTENERS.

The scene with the flying babies

was a scene that we shot a few weeks later.

And we were trying to find a little, smiley baby.

The key baby who's hanging up from the bouncer

and he had to be a happy little chap.

Fran and I did the only thing we could possibly think of

which was to cast our own son, Billy Jackson, in the role.

Billy was about three-and-a-half-months old when we shot the film.

Fran, see... Turn to the camera.

Big kiss.

All right, kid, quit jumping around and acting like a baby.

This is serious.

Now, we're gonna scare the living daylights out of your parents.

- So, come on, kid, you gonna help us out? - Are you with us?

See? He gets it. The kids always get it.

It didn't always go that smoothly, I remember, with the filming.

There was one moment where we were ready to shoot a close-up of Billy

and he was nowhere to be found, and we realized that he was asleep.

You know, it was his nap time.

Me, being the father, I was given the job of having to go and sort of wake him up.

He didn't like that at all.

And we shot footage of him, but it was not particularly successful.

He was not a happy guy, getting woken out of his little morning nap.

Because this is supposed to take place in America

and we're down there in New Zealand.

They needed every American they could get their hands on.

Because all Kiwis think that they could do American accents.

"Oh, I can do an American accent.

"'Give me a cheeseburger."

And you just laugh.

Just like when I would try to do my Kiwi accent

they would just fall down laughing, like uncontrollably.

So, they needed anybody.

So, my wife is an actress.

So, I said, "Hey, how about, you know, Leslie being in it?"

And so, she's the screaming maid

in the Mrs. Water house sequence

featuring superstar actor Billy Jackson.

Mrs. Water house.

Mrs. Water house!

Damn. Here, man. This one did le poo-poo.

Billy even got to do special-effect shots

because we had to shoot some stuff of him in front of the blue screen.

And the poor little guy was in his little bouncer

suspended on wires in front of the blue-screen stage.

I think he was there for so long that he'd occasionally fall asleep.

You're asking me about my experiences

working with three-month-old superstar, Billy Jackson?

The finest actor it's ever been my pleasure to work with?

It was an honor.

He was so great in the film, he has incredible charisma.

I was really happy

that he made his debut in our movie.

I had a lot of good times with Billy

when I'd go over to Peter and Fran's house and just hang out.

I mean, I remember going one day, and I missed my kids so much

there was nothing for me to just go...

And I picked up Billy one day

and he... I could tell he...

He needed a change of a... He needed his diaper changed.

And I just, without even thinking, just started to...

Fran must have thought I was a gift from God

because I just started changing his diaper.

Because I was just so used to it.

It's something I'd been doing for years.

So besides being, you know, having a chance to work with Billy...

Billy was like, in some ways, my surrogate kid, you know,

when I was over there, and it was really sweet.

He's probably like in college by now.

It's kind of interesting to show him the shots

of himself when he was three-and-a-half months.

Because I don't think he really knows who it is.

Gosh, you didn't have very much hair then, did you?

Who's that?

You? Was that... Is that you?

No, you didn't have much hair.

Where the special effects got tricky is where they...

The real actors, like Frank Bannister,

had to actually interact with the ghosts.

It's one thing to have them talking to each other

and looking at each other and getting the eye lines right.

But when they actually have to touch each other or pass through each other

that was where things got a little tricky, and

I remember one particularly difficult little scene was

in Frank's house

where Michael Fox has to grab the tail of a dog, a ghost dog, Rustler.

And Rustler is racing out along the floor

and leaps out of the wall and dragging Frank behind him.

And of course, Frank can't go through the wall like Rustler can.

So, Frank slams against the wall and sort of lets go of his tail.

This was done by basically giving Michael a little piece of wire

that he had to grab and hold on to.

And we had guys outside the house pulling on the wire.

The great thing about working with Michael Fox

is, you know, his eagerness to do as many of his own stunts as he could.

Which is great for a director because you can really sell

the idea that it's the actor who's, you know, going through this.

I like to do as much of that stuff as I can do

because I think it's important to be able to tie my face to the action.

And for the audience to see, to know that it's me.

And there are things that look more dangerous than they are.

I mean, getting hit by the car.

I was walking by the car and I felt the hood of it.

I just happened to put my hand on the hood a bit.

And I think I was talking to Peter, and I noticed how smooth it was.

I said, "This is really cool. This would be great to slide across the top of this."

And that's a stunt that I'd done in a few things,

where you run and you slide across the hood of a car.

And then it just evolved into, you know,

"It would be great. The car can come through

"the crosswalk and just stop short of me

"and I'll throw myself back over it, and slide right off it."

And then the next thing you know, they say "Okay, rolling," so you go...

"What did I just do?

"What did I suggest? What the hell am I doing?"

We got it all in one shot.

And, you know, really, you can see that it's him, you know,

getting whacked by this car.

And it really... That sort of thing helps the film so much.

You know, I love that stuff.

It was ironic that after doing so many of his own stunts,

Michael finally does injure himself quite badly

doing something that you wouldn't even describe as a stunt.

It was just one of those freak accidents

that none of us could have really predicted.

No.

No.

I just stepped in a place that I hadn't stepped before

and there was a hole in the floor of the forest.

And just, you know, kind of twisted my ankle

and popped some tendons, broke a couple of bones

in the bottom of my foot. Hurt like hell.

We had two or three shots left to do that night, and Michael says,

"Look, don't worry. We'll get this done.

"We'll get this scene finished."

You know, and I could tell that his foot was hurting like hell.

In fact the last shot that we did that night

you know, he had to run along the trees.

And you can see very clearly in the movie that he's limping.

Ready, and action.

The next day Michael's foot had swollen up, and he was barely able to walk.

We shot the scene in the restaurant

where he's sitting at the table with Lucy, having dinner.

You know, that was being filmed with his foot

in incredibly painful condition. He could barely walk on it.

He had a stick. But he was at least able to sit at the table

and, you know, do that scene.

But we basically ran out of things that we could shoot with Michael

with him running around.

And it was clear to us that he just had to get his foot better again

before we could carry on with any of his scenes. So,

the basic thing that happened was the shoot was shut down for a week.

I got a couple of days off.

I got a couple of weeks off.

As much as it may sound mercenary of me

I think that Michael hurting his foot in that way really helped us with the film

because it gave us a little bit of breathing space.

We were able to do some more work on the script.

I was able to out together some of the footage we'd shot.

And I think we ended up with a better movie, ironically, because that happened.

I'm sure Michael probably wouldn't agree quite with me.

But I have to be mercenary. I'm the director, and these things do...

Sometimes are blessing in disguises.

Stand by,

and action.

Starts wobbling. Wobble, wobble and over it goes.

- Crash. - Oh!

Okay, let's set up for a take, guys.

- Just a couple of people standing. - Lee.

And action.

And wobble!

And cut.

Take 2. Tail slate. Camera B.

Very good.

Yeah, why not? Might as well.

It was good.

Shocking.

I think you could just do a little bit more for us here.

Okay.

- I mean, yeah, just a... - Just a touch.

Oh, my!

Almost like you're about to burst into tears.

I don't know, something that's not too over-the-top, something slightly comic.

- You know. - I get it.

These are dickybirds stuck back on.

Oh, yes.

Where did that one come from?

Just inside, all right.

And wobble and crash!

And bending over it, Stuart.

Okay, cut.

All right.

Cut.

It looked all right, didn't it? We'll just go check...

Just come right down.

Yeah. Just pan.

Down to here.

Yep.

Yep.

And spin around at them, and it's like, you know...

And then it's just, "Whoa, bang, bang," you know?

And by that stage, Michael's gone across.

So it's like, "Oh," bang. So he's kind of like

just starts shooting into the fright of it.

I think it's better if it's the guy with the gun.

Now, what we want to do is... The first shot we do

we'll do it without any shooting and stuff.

Okay.

We'll do it with two cameras.

So we have a camera over here which will be inside the cot.

But if you can throw the statue past the camera

and then we've got a camera down here.

Behind Sue. Sue?

A camera down there which will then just pick up

a run across and a leap down.

- Okay. - Hold it.

- One little bit of... - No.

- Sudden reaction... - Okay.

You suddenly spin around, you know, 'cause you got kind of nervous.

- "What the hell's that?" Okay? - Okay.

Thanks, guys.

Okay, here we go.

Just a little, push it, Richard,

Michael's reaction to the judge.

Quiet, please.

And roll.

Rolling.

813. Take 1. Camera A. Head slate.

And action.

And the Judge jumps.

Crash.

You stay right there.

Heads up!

Bang, crash!

Cut.

I think we're compromising unnecessarily.

- I would... - Okay.

So...

I mean, that's actually quite a nice shot.

That's a nice shot of him in the foreground with the cops behind him.

That's enough?

Obviously not.

Need more. Got any more pads?

- Stand on one leg. - Right.

And now bend it. Fold it.

- That's what you wanna do. Just faster. - That's what I did.

Wasn't that what I was doing?

No, you went like this and then fell back.

- Like that. - Yeah.

And...

And action.

And crash.

We're tight here.

Is that not working for you?

No, no, that'll be okay.

We'll shoot them together as a reverse, so that we'd get the action of...

Action.

Easy.

And crash!

You stay right there.

On, shit.

Hey, hey, Stop!

Still looks a little light to me.

Yeah, it needs just a little bit...

Oh, he did. Yeah.

Okay, that's all right. Talk to Stuart about that.

Okay, it's worth one more going

just to get it right. Yep. Okay.

I'll just give you makeup. You touch him up.

What's going to happen now

on "Action," is that you'll hit the ground...

Okay.

...and fire off the first shot immediately.

You don't start firing until he does that first shot.

You're standing there, and it's almost like have your gun down

and when you hear the first bang, "bang," go straight into "bang,"

fire straightaways.

Rehearsals on the guns.

So you should leave, you should start around with these guys instead of...

Testing the gun!

Okay. Gun firing!

Okay, gun firing.

Ready, and action.

Cut.

Quiet, please.

Did he find the CD?

Pretty manic, pretty manic stuff, but it's good.

It's very unusual you know, to hear guns blazing

in Wellington, New Zealand.

But we're Americans, so we feel right at home.

Oh, yeah. We felt totally comfortable.

We was like, "More guns. Louder.

"Louder. People are not going to believe this."

In fact, we brought with us, you know, tapes,

relaxation tapes, from the States.

- Of, just, you know... - Gun fire.

- Gunfire, 2:00, 3:00 in the morning. - Yeah.

Chicago, Philadelphia, just gun fire, you know, to help you go to sleep.

You know, when you're here for a while, that's... The only reason I'm homesick

is because after two, three months of peace and quiet and no pollution,

beautiful weather and beautiful scenery, you need some crime and mayhem

and all the other things that make our country great.

As soon as it blows, you'll know.

Shooting, quiet.

And roll.

It shunted, didn't it?

I mean, the only thing you can do if you're really brave

is to get the first one and then just tilt up to get the second one.

I think I'll do that because it doesn't matter if I miss the second one

then I miss the second one, but at least I got the first one.

All right, so you're gonna tilt?

Roll cameras.

And rolling.

814. Take 2. Camera A. Head slate.

And action.

- Cut. - Need more slate.

Cool.

- You got that? - Yeah, I think you missed something.

That's good, and you just paused there at the right time, too.

Just to see it happening behind. It's good.

Okay.

Okay.

Thanks a lot. Yeah, we'll print those ones as well.

Well, even when the front one's going

you've still got a second, probably

before this one actually starts to...

See, the problem...

ls there any way you can run your leads over here?

The problem is that I have to... When I first go down,

I have to sort of smash my face.

I have to use my hands, then I can cover up.

Action.

Bang'. Bang!

Bang, bang, bang!

- Here we go. Ready. - And action.

Oh, shit!

Bang, bang, bang, bang, bang.

Okay. Good. Good.

I'm might give it more of that and that.

On the day, Mike, depending on what happens in the house...

- Okay, set up for a take. - We're shooting.

Eight on C.

Mark.

And action!

Holy shit!

Up.

Cut.

Nice.

It's great!

There's been a few bumps and a few bruises, but...

Like Bob Zemeckis and I used to say,

"Pain is temporary, film is forever."

You get through it.

Okay, let's lose it.

- Looks good and it'll... - Yeah.

That is excellent.

I'm impressed by that.

That's great.

Excellent stuff.

Bang!

Do you need more on that side?

Have you got a cable basher for this?

Camera's on here, and you and Mike are charging.

And here, you're in front.

I'm going all the way back.

On this rehearsal, John,

spin around, shoot at Jim. And at the point you are when you are shooting at Jim,

the best thing you can do is to take reference of what's behind him.

- Okay? - Yeah.

So let's... So if you just start here...

We're going to shoot it once in place.

What we'll do in rehearsal is start up on stage.

And just rehearse with everybody doing it then.

Would this be the mark back here, Peter?

Are you guys unionizing or something?

Is that what this is all about?

Oh, come on, Frank. You know it's not about that.

What is it about?

- It's about other things. - Okay, give the man complaints.

- Cigars. - Cigars?

You been promising to buy me a box of cigars since I don't know how long.

I hate to break it to you but you're dead.

You knew I had a pollen intolerance.

Why would anyone blow the smoke in my face?

I would blow my lunch in your face.

Now, see, that's just the kind of talk that...

Darn it, Frank! You give us what we want or I'm gonna bust your ass!

Talking about the little wine-soaked things with the plastic clip-ens?

You've been watching too many SHAFT movies. I'm talking about some Cubans.

- That's right. - Yeah. That's bullshit.

- So, Ricky Ricardo and some people... - Get down!

Turn over.

Action.

Here we go.

Positions, please.

Hold this mark. Okay, roll.

Tail slate.

- Ready, set... - Set.

And action.

We got to go. Go!

- Cut. - Tail slate.

Edit.

Trini, this is... Camera's over here

and you're like in charge over here. You're in front.

And skidding right here and...

We should ascertain if you're going to go high or low first

just so the guys know.

Well, what I thought was, because it's there, I thought I'd knock out that stuff.

That'd be my natural thing... I look at that and see if I can widen it.

And then I'd go, "Yeah, it's widening. Great."

- Then would you go high or low? - I'd probably go up in here.

Okay, so we should go like there, there,

- and then I guess you're gonna go down. - Yeah.

It would be quite good if it would stop at a certain point

that you just drop that and maybe both of you swing the last couple of times.

The last two or three with your hands.

Yeah. Well, that'll be one of those things that'll be like...

'Cause you'd only do this till it looked like somebody could get through.

You're like, "Can you get through now?"

Then, you might be just using your shoulders or elbows to go through...

- I use elbow. - Elbows.

I suggest elbow.

What we should do is just to walk around in the other room and see what's there.

So that at least you guys know when you get on the other side.

There's nothing there.

You nosey little bastards. I said, "Go home."

What's this?

Scottie's gonna be down... Show us where you're gonna be, Scottie.

Here's the camera.

There's the camera.

- He said, where are you? - And there he is.

I'm going to do a bit of various until he comes through.

- A bit of various. Now... - Yeah.

There's a fire extinguisher coming through.

These things are gonna fly, Scottie, so just be...

Are they real?

No, but they're heavy. Are you sure?

- They're fake, but they're solid. - Yeah.

And I don't waive the possibility that, that might fly out of my hand.

I mean, I don't think it will. But just be aware that that's.

The thing that you're revving...

Fire extinguisher, which is about this long...

So we'll rehearse the opening Steadicam bit.

Just up until the point of impact.

What I'll do is I'll smash it a couple of times.

And then you like kind of...

I'll smash it twice. I'll smash it three times and then I'll stop for a second.

And then you like go and start quailing,

then I'll get to test what we'll do, and then smash it

once or twice and say, "Okay," and then you clear out a little bit. Hit a couple.

Until we got a big enough hole. And then I'll say, "Can you get through?"

And you say, "Yes."

- Say, "No, I ate too much food for lunch." - No.

- You know what... - "I'm having a fat day."

And action.

Tail slate. Camera B.

Cut.

1410. Take 1. Camera B. Tail slate.

So if we had one in the mag but not in the barrel

and then Dee can just do that.

Because you're just seeing him

like, you know, just running

- down the set... - Down there they don't have anything that

- they can hurt me with, right? - No.

- You're just... - I wouldn't be carefully coming around

- the corner or anything. - No, this is a racing... This is running.

And the sum...

I mean what's... It's just trying to capture

a real scary feeling of being pursued in a dark building

narrow corridors, kind of screaming and just snarling,

just be kind of totally, you know, just be really scary.

- I see them? - You see them straight through there...

Boom, straightaway, bang.

Ready, and action.

Okay. Here we go.

Good.

We're just waiting for the camera to come back, and we're right to go.

Good to rock and roll.

Do you need more on that side?

- Rolling. - 1412. Take 1. Cameras A and B.

- Set? - Set.

And action.

Cut.

- Okay. - We did...

- Stanley's tools are everywhere. - Can't get in?

Well, yeah, I think that'll do for the day.

- Go home and sleep. - How are you doing?

I'm just going to go sleep in this.

Well, on you go, back to sleep.

Thank you very much. Go in and get over your flight.

- Set. - And action.

- Cut. - Cut.

- Cool. - You do really react to the neighbor.

Well, let's look at Tony play it.

I just think it's gonna be good.

Just do the bit at the end, when Denise comes running in again.

You come up here and feel the torchlight'll swing onto you.

And just... We'll have to get a position up here.

An accurate position of you, just to tuck yourself down.

And there's a camera around the corner here that'll

get you, and that'll pop from the back wall.

- Okay. - Action.

Tail slate, camera B.

Okay. Good.

- Sorry. - 1406. Take 1. Camera B. Tail slate.

No, I got you. No, you were there.

We're good.

I ducked out, then came back.

You came back on it. But you did come back.

- I can also do this. I can also go here... - Yeah.

- ...and come back. - Actually that's the one, and we use that.

- Yeah, that's stronger. - You come around here.

- That's stronger. - And I come back

- and then I'm like this. - Yeah. That's...

- Yeah. - Great.

It feels right, we can use all that.

- Yeah. - That's good.

Action.

Listen.

Lucy.

Oh, this is great.

Shit.

Once more's enough.

Okay, one more, please, one more.

We got that one.

Just pick it up and say, "Frank." You just gotta grab it. "Frank."

- Okay, fine. So that sounds good. - Great.

No worries. Okay, so...

- Statue of Liberty on three. - Yeah.

- Yeah. - Statue of Liberty.

That's really good, and

we've just got Mike on the stairs, so what we'll

have to do in terms of our reference is to get the height of a couple of stairs.

And so when we're on the blue-screen stage, that's the level that Mike...

Well, I tell you what, Mike just jumps on the floor

and we just lower our camera

by that amount

when we're on the stage.

One of those shots, Mike, is gonna...

It's almost gonna be like you just take over the frame, that's like...

If you just time it with K.C., that will say "Check," and then it's like

you know, that movement, rather than just being still

and just doing it with your face.

It will be nice to get that sort of...

- That fluid body movement or two. - Got it.

I can do that.

- Without... Don't get too close to this. - I shan't.

Still on the floor, please.

Excuse me, Doctor.

We're looking for ward 12.

Oh, right. Go up the stairs to the fourth floor

on the corridor to your right just opposite the chapel.

I'll get somebody to help you. Orderly.

Orderly, are you deaf?

I said, are you deaf, orderly?

Hey, moron.

Gun swings up.

K.C. backing away, and cut.

Not bad. We'll go again.

Just play it back a little bit for Mike.

- Busy hallway. - Yeah.

It was good.

I think that I might've caught a piece of his coat. The arm thing is great.

I noticed that the lock down... I don't know how much of it's in the cinema.

Orderly, are you deaf?

Does it stick on paper? ls all I'm saying.

No.

- Did that slip? - No, it's just slipping at the same place.

And consistent, deliberately.

Try not to do it if you can...

- Yeah, I'll try not to do that. - If you can avoid that.

- And fire. - Bang.

Okay. Good.

I think we should be careful, K.C. If you double up too much like that...

Yeah, I can see that.

It's a good shot though.

And what was it that happened with K.C.'s tie here?

Are you gonna get it chopped off there?

It'll blow out.

Okay, well that was... Shall we rehearse again

or just shoot?

No, we've found it.

Here we go.

It was in his pocket.

Thermo control.

- Yes, sir. - Thank you.

And okay.

Stand by and roll. Action.

And fire.

Cut.

It's not real, is it?

- Now listen, he's a traveler. - This is open, isn't it, Trini?

- No, I'll open it on the way out. - I'll just leave it there?

A trail of syringes, Band-Aids.

Yeah.

Okay, here we go. Ready for clearance.

Hey, where are we going?

She's up there, right?

- We're doing our best. - Take the lead. It's fairly subtle.

This is private property.

Mrs. Bradley. Hi, I'm Dr. Lynskey. I work at the Medical Center.

No, you don't.

I know everyone who works there.

- Cut. - Good.

We'll just try one more, but that was great, Trini.

Maybe you shouldn't offer your hand quite so early.

Maybe it should be like, you know, "I'm Dr. Lynskey."

Because you're still quite a long way away from here.

- Right. Yeah. - It's just the fact that you're...

When maybe you just, you know, say your name and step up.

Just put a little "trust me" a little early.

We're gonna lose the sun completely for the day, aren't we, very soon?

I think the most difficult character in the film to conceptualize and

imagine was the grim reaper figure.

The grim reaper is, you know, our most classical image

of the death figure, of the soul collector

coming to harvest the souls and take them away.

And so, you know, it was important that

we use this image, but

I didn't want it to be totally boring, and I wanted something to be

original and funky about it, so...

I didn't know quite what it was,

and we threw around various ideas, and

Christian drew some drawings of what he imagined the reaper to be like.

One of the first ones I did was

this one here

which is a very sort of

animalesque

creature with high shoulders and long, long arms.

But it was still going with the fact that there's a creature under there

which is why I've still got the hand coming out from under a cuff.

I wanted him to be the reaper. I wanted him to have the scythe, I wanted him

to be the figure of death, because the whole

thing at this stage of the movie is that death has come to this town, and

it has to be a recognizable figure. If it was a totally fantastical monster

something we'd never seen before, then it wouldn't...

We wouldn't be thinking "death" all the time. We'd be thinking "monster."

I did this illustration here,

which

because I put the hands back into shadow,

it's not very well defined, but Pete saw this and

took that to be...

That the hands were actually part of the cloth. It was just a gnarled piece of cloth

draping off the end

that formed a hand, and he really liked that idea.

So I think that was, you know, the first breakthrough that we had with the reaper,

was the concept that there's nothing actually underneath the cloak.

There's no creature actually in there. What it is, is it's

the cloth itself is the living creature. And what...

The hands are caused

by the corners of the cloth sort of ripped into strips

and they're the fingers.

If, like, the wind blew the cape up,

there wouldn't be anything under there. There's no feet.

It's just moving around like there's an invisible demon inside the cloth.

And at that point, you know, I really felt we had,

you know, a predator that was going to be interesting.

The biggest decision that we had to do with the reaper was,

trying to figure out how we were going to achieve the figure.

And initially we thought that we'd

mix it up with a variety of techniques.

We explored the idea of making a rod puppet.

We started to think about him as a predatorial,

stealthy moving, almost spider-like character.

We needed this thing to move believably like a human,

but unfortunately due to the forward-slung head

it was not of human proportions.

We even designed a combination

of a guy in a costume and a puppet.

Someone came up with a very good idea of

allowing the actor's head to protrude through the shoulders.

He would wear a helmet and then off his helmet would

be a drive rod down to the head of the reaper.

We even tried to mount a full-size reaper on the top of the car

for some shots where the car's driving down the road at night and

we would only get brief glimpses of him

in the darkness, and we thought we would

get away with having, you know, like a dummy on top of the car, and we did some

tests with that technique.

We took the idea of the suit a little further and we

designed something that a stunt performer could wear

for the scene where

the two ghosts are fighting the reaper

through the...

Frank's prison cell and all around the prison cell.

That scene was originally a lot more elaborate than what ended up in the movie.

What we'll do here is, is we have a sort of a bit of a struggle

through the foreground from one side of the cell to the other,

and then back again.

Whichever way you wanna do it. Just keep it kind of free-flowing.

We thought that by using the guy in the reaper suit, we could probably get

those little flashes of shots, like one or two seconds long

that we'd get away with, because we knew that it didn't look that good.

We basically ended up shooting Jim Fyfe and Chi McBride

fighting with this guy for, I don't know...

We spent about two days fighting with this guy in this weird getup.

It was really unfair to him.

It was like fighting a blind guy, because he

didn't know where we were, and we would jump all over him and

have complete disregard for his physical well-being.

They would take the suit off him and say,

"You all right?" And he'd be

sweating, and he'd be, like, all red,

and you can practically hear his heart beating

on stage, and he'd go, "Yeah, I'm fine."

"Let's do it again." And so they put the suit back on him, and we tortured

the poor guy, I mean, he ended up going to hospital.

Was he hospitalized? Seriously?

Oh, yeah. He definitely went to hospital.

I think his shoulder was actually, like, put out of joint.

Oh, God. I sure hope not.

We came to realize that

in shooting something that's made up of cloth,

whether it's a puppet or a guy in a suit,

you can blow fans on it, you can shoot it at different camera speeds, but

in the end of the day, you really don't get anything

different than what it actually is,

which is cloth blowing

and moving around, and

it didn't really... We wanted the reaper to be something new

something that we hadn't

really seen before, and we didn't think we were achieving it.

So we turned to the computer

department for a possible solution.

Early on in the production there was...

There were some tests which we accomplished of the grim reaper,

to try an ascertain whether doing

him on a computer was a feasible

option.

We've seen dinosaur skins and metal men and various other sort of

things have been achieved, but

having material that sways with gravity

and if the figure spins, the material spins around like cloth or a cape would spin.

And all that whole dynamic kind of energy

of material, and the way it folds and creases.

You know, all this was sort of highly technical computer stuff that

we were not sure how much success we were going to have with it.

I really liked the very first test that we did.

For the first time, I think, the reaper came across as a genuinely menacing figure.

We were still working on the reaper, and we had started shooting the movie,

which was a little bit of a concern.

We were filming scenes when we didn't quite

know how we were gonna finally achieve this effect.

So we handed Gray some footage of the scene where the reaper

first appears out of the bathroom mirror,

sticks his hand in the guy's chest and lowers him to the floor.

And we said to Gray, "Here's the footage. You know, there's no reaper here.

"The guy's being lowered on wires.

"So see what you can do. Surprise us."

And Gray went away and worked on the sequence for a while.

And the results that he came back with were incredibly encouraging.

It was his way, I think, of proving to us that this was an achievable effect.

The test was well-received, and this influenced the decision to...

Greatly, to make him completely as a computer-generated character.

We ultimately redid this scene

once we refined the reaper a little bit further.

But that initial test is very representative

of what we finally ended up with.

As in the case of most creative processes,

it's much easier

to define what you don't like once you see it, rather than

molding what you like. And I remember when I first got here, we devoted

a couple of weeks to defining what that reaper was supposed to be, and

it was Gray's assigned duties to

come up with different looks, and we were just trying

everything possible, from a character that had

a positive shadow to a negative shadow on him.

He was refracting his background, he was...

He was chrome, he was a TERMINATOR reaper.

He, at one stage, became completely transparent.

Kind of a PREDATOR reaper.

Specular reaper. You can only see him by his highlights.

He was a smoky reaper,

continually emitting particles when he moved.

Kinetic reaper, you could only see him, parts of him that were moving.

I think there was probably one that was like a...

Gray's breakdown reaper at one point.

I'll be spending

$10,000 and six months to explain it all to a psychotherapist.

Now that we'd achieved a look for the reaper that we really liked,

his performance and his character became the most critical thing.

And since we were no longer having a guy in a suit who I could sort of

yell directions at from the side of the stage,

it was very much handed over to the animators, because the reaper

was basically animated in the traditional frame-by-frame manner.

The only thing that's different

about computer animation, opposed to

traditional animation, are the tools.

The tools are the only things that

continue to change and evolve.

But the principles of animation have always remained the same, and

you've got to keep that in mind when you're sitting down at the computer

'cause the computer's not going to do the work for you. It's

just another tool. It's like a

more complicated type of a pencil.

My tools for animating the reaper here...

I'm taking these colored chains, and when I select them,

I'm able to put various rotations and translations on them.

This is the way that I can manipulate him into a pose that I like.

It is like a puppet that exists inside the computer.

You use the mouse and the keyboard

to touch the puppet and to manipulate it that way.

You could make a nice pose

and save key frames for it, like

basically tell the computer, "Remember this pose at this particular frame."

And then you could go to the next pose at another frame

and save that key, and then you could watch how

it's moving from one key to next, and then you kind of

gotta baby-sit the computer and make sure it's

doing it in a natural way, because it tends to

have this really

almost too-fluid look to it if you don't.

This is a shaded, more solid view

to give me an idea of what it's going to look like

when it's closer to the end product on film.

He's got such a strong shape.

Between his long fingers and the sharp

angles in his shoulders and the way his cowl comes out. You know, it's...

It was really easy to find nice poses with that, because it's...

By default, he is so menacing-looking already.

This thing was supposed to be a predatory animal, and...

So we started applying laws of predatory nature.

He's got these fantastic shoulders which,

when he's walking, you can really play with, to roll them like a tiger would.

One of the difficult things with animating the reaper was

that he doesn't have a face,

so you can't look at his face and read his attitude based on that.

And in this shot where he's walking through the museum,

the thing that I found was easiest to play with was his hands, rolling the fingers

as he's approaching camera.

Right, so this is the reaper shot at the cemetery?

Right. Just checking out the reaper with the scythe and the blade.

Making sure everything looks and feels correct in proportion.

Yeah.

Such that...

It was a little nerve-racking for me

trying to direct the animation of the reaper, because what I get to look at

was these very early renders that were of a stiff, sort of rigid

figure that didn't have the swirling cloak, and it was

hard to imagine what he was ultimately going to look like because it wasn't

until he got put through a process called dynamation

where the gravity was applied to his cloak, that he really came to life.

I wanted the reaper shots to be as dynamic as I could.

With a lot of energy, a lot of panning, a lot of moving camera.

And that tended to make the shots a lot more difficult to achieve.

For instance, like a shot where he lands on top of the car.

That was difficult because you don't want him to look as if he's floating in

the air and not physically grabbing something, so

you have to build a model of the car within the computer,

then that has to be motion-tracked frame by frame to exactly lock on to the

car that was shot on the location.

If he's jumping off a fence that we shot from a moving vehicle,

that becomes difficult, because a model of the fence has to be made

and then that has to be

motion-tracked within the computer in three dimensions to

follow exactly what our camera was doing

on the night we filmed the background plate.

This stuff just makes shots a lot more difficult. Instead of

you know, doing them in one week, it takes three weeks to do the same sort of shot.

Our ghost dog, Rustler, started out as a

puppet. We were

thinking that we could use a puppet for 60%, 70% of the shots

and then use CG for some of the wider shots.

We very, very quickly resolved in our minds that we wanted to go with the bloodhound.

The classic Western American dog.

The sort of droopy character of the bloodhound made for

a great sculpting challenge and a great piece of design.

We came up with some very serious design decisions

on the way that Rustler would look.

He would have no eyes, which was a very interesting one.

We took the eyes totally out of the sockets

and by articulating the edges of the sockets,

we could create the feeling of an eye line.

We made the decision, hopefully for time-saving on the day

to set off doing Rustler as an animatronic puppet.

Once the movie was cut together and we saw

what Rustler shots had survived the cut,

it was clear that it was

going to be easier to achieve him, I think, with a CG model than a puppet.

Because a lot of the shots involved walking and running around,

things that are generally difficult for any puppet to achieve.

The CG dog was such a perfect copy of the real dog.

And it was so beautifully built that it would survive quite close scrutiny.

So in that sense

the reason to go physical slowly became less and less.

The main reason to go physical was

to get interactions with humans, which

if you're shooting a ghost dog

you don't need anyway, because you have to shoot them separately.

And also to get all the details you can't get into a computer model.

Whereas the computer model was so detailed that,

that wasn't the case.

Ultimately, it was a logical decision to make,

to replace the physical altogether.

My favorite scene with Rustler never made it into the movie and

didn't even make it into the special edition, which is incredibly tragic.

It involved a scene that got

cut out of the movie very early, and we'd never even

begun the effects shots for it, so there's nothing to show.

It was where Frank goes to his mail box and the mailman was walking away.

I wanted this one shot to have the ghost dog,

Rustler, snapping at the mailman crazily,

like dogs do. And the closest we ever got to

completing the scene was a reference shot that we did of me

running around with this rubber dog.

So I don't think we should really cut that shot into the movie.

I don't think it would work that well.

There was another Rustler shot that was quite funny

which followed the fly spray in the kitchen.

It was a shot where we had the Judge chasing him around

the house, trying to get his jawbone back, and

for a few seconds, Rustler defies gravity.

Hey, are you guys unionizing? Is that what all this is about?

You know, once again, a lot of this work that had been done

building these puppets sort of hit the cutting room floor.

So, I hope those guys forgive me.

In our script, we had a character called the Gatekeeper, who was

the guardian of the cemetery.

He was supposed to be like a big bully,

thuggish, sidekick to Hiles, the drill sergeant.

Initial ideas were some sort of an ogre

or a demonic-looking creature who was

sort of guarding the gate, guarding the way into the cemetery.

We played around with various sketches

and more maquettes, doing a huge number of

little sculptures, trying to figure out what sort of look he'd have.

Now, fortunately or unfortunately, I'm not sure still

I proceeded to do one as a

hugely overweight, baby-like cherub.

I really liked the idea of the Gatekeeper being a cherub. I thought that was fun.

The idea of doing a totally naked

flying baby with flapping wings,

fully talking face, wobbling flesh,

was daunting, to say the least.

Richard Taylor's guys built a very elaborate suit

for a performer to wear, and it had a radio-controlled face

and motorized wings that would flap up and down like a little cupid.

I think there is something funny about a character whose wings

flapping desperately hard but it's never ever going to

actually lift him off the ground.

All I knew was this big, rubber baby with this little voice would say,

"I can't see, Charlie. Charlie, I need to come down now."

And it was bizarre, and I don't know if I ever met that person.

But I had this relationship with her.

I felt like I had to take care of her, 'cause a lot of times she

couldn't speak and couldn't get her ideas across, but

she's this big, rubber-baby person.

And her name was Alice.

And I never met her.

Jeff Combs was someone who I had known from the RE-ANIMATOR movies.

I'd never met him, but I was a big RE-ANIMATOR fan. Still am.

You know, these films are about 10 years old, and I hadn't seen him

doing any movies in recent times,

and I wondered, you know, "Where's the RE-ANIMATOR guy now?

"He'd be someone who was interesting," and I mentioned his name to Victoria Burrows.

And she tracked him down and asked him to come in to audition for us.

I remember the first time that Jeff walked into the audition room,

he ran up to me and he shook my hand, and he says... His first words were,

"Do you know you and I are both in the Fangoria Hall of Fame?"

This is very rare. He met me before I auditioned.

He wanted to just meet me and say, "This is sort of what I'm looking for.

"NOW...

go away and come back in 10 minutes, and we'll do it."

He proceeded to do a really, you know, great audition.

We put him through the hoops. I remember he wanted to audition with his glasses on.

He had an idea that this character wore glasses.

And I couldn't imagine Dammers in glasses,

so I asked him to take his glasses off after the first take.

Now, you have to imagine, I'm blind.

I can't see. I've got pages.

Fortunately, I had it memorized, but I always have that crutch, and I...

So I had to basically take my glasses off and

act with Michael J. Fox as a blur before me.

It was pretty weird.

I have a blurry memory of what the audition was like.

We created this character

who was like this FBI agent who the government have sent in

to, you know, to break and to bust cults and sects.

And he's been doing this for like 15 years

and he's the guy that always just gets

sent in to go undercover for six months before they crack the case, you know.

And the problem with Dammers is that they've...

They haven't de-programmed him in between missions.

They have given him no therapy whatsoever in the last 15 years

and the poor guy has just, like,

sacrificed his, sort of, like, his personality for his country.

If you take nationalism that far,

it really turns into

fervent fascism.

So that's sort of, like, where the haircut came in.

Jeff turns up in New Zealand and comes up to me

and he's got a library book. He'd been to the library.

The Wellington Public Library, and I got out some books

on Hitler. Pictorial books.

And I found photos of young Hitler.

And he says,

"I think Dammers should have this sort of haircut,"

and it was the sort of Hitler haircut, where he's, like, shaved himself around...

Just above his ears.

And he says, "I think this will be a really great look for Dammers."

And I thought, "Yeah, that's gonna be great."

So Jeff went off and got like this haircut.

And then he comes back,

and without me knowing, he goes and he visits Richard Taylor.

He wanted us to make him little, tiny appliances

that would fit behind his ears and force them forward.

The idea was that it would make him look slightly geeky or a bit awkward.

The last touch was

the idea that we had of putting black contact lenses on him.

He had this image and this vision of this man

having these dark, dark, black, beady,

billiard balls of eyes that, like,

were alive and yet dead.

So I'm on the set, working on the film

and I get this, sort of, tap on my shoulder.

I turn around, and it's Jeff standing there.

He's got the Hitler haircut and he's got these things

glued behind his ears that are making his ears stick out, and he says,

"What do you think, what do you think?"

I get all the fruity cases, Mrs. Lynskey.

For God's sake, come in and sit down.

Another area that Jeff Combs had input into,

in terms of Dammers' character was this

chest tattooing or scarring thing that was made for him.

And I know that he worked very hard with Richard Taylor to create a,

you know, the perfect combination of sort of

cultish-type tattoos and carvings on his chest.

He was very particular in the sort of symbols that he wanted to be on there.

What was really great about it was Richard Taylor and all those guys

involved me in the design of this thing.

They came to me with sketches and they said, "This is what we have."

And... Which was really phenomenal. And they said, "But what do you think?"

I mean, almost to the point they said, "You draw one.

"Go home, and take some of this.

"Here's everything that we have, and you come back."

Well, I went home and I drew one, and...

It was so wonderfully collaborative.

Just like every aspect, for me, on this movie,

was a wonderful collaborative effort.

My body is a road map of pain.

1974...

Children of Lucifer.

Three years undercover

drinking goat's blood.

The old butt ring, another one of...

Another one of Peter's ideas, actually.

And he brought it up fairly early on,

but it never quite got written into the script.

You have to figure Milton,

Special Agent Dammers, having been

in all of these hideous cults and sects

that some pretty damaging things have happened to him,

despite the fact that he's also just, kind of, an uptight sort of fellow.

He would have kind of a hemorrhoidal condition,

a chronic hemorrhoidal condition.

In fact... No.

And so, you know, he needs a little protection.

And, uh, so.

So Peter had this idea of this butt ring, and...

So they went to a store

where you can get these things.

What do you call this kind of a store?

Like a medical equipment store,

you know? "We want a walker," or, "We want an |V," or, you know, "a butt ring."

And they brought it back and, yeah,

it was a butt ring, but it was kind of big

and...

So it couldn't be portable.

It would look ridiculous, pulling this big thing out.

So the prop guys,

brilliant guys that they are, they go, "Okay."

And they run off, and they come back and they go, "How's this?"

And it was perfect.

Great little... Tiny little thing, about like that,

perfect size.

I said, "Where did you get this?"

And they said, "it's...

"it's an inner tube for a wheelbarrow."

No one would know. it just looks like a little mini butt donut.

In the movie, there's a number of shots where I wanted the camera

to be traveling at a very high speed.

For instance, when we're traveling through the cemetery,

with the Reaper's point of view, and we're racing past tombstones.

Or we're traveling down the hillside, over the rooftops,

when Michael's gliding down as a ghost.

It's not exactly practical to use a helicopter

to fly like three feet over people's rooftops or through a cemetery,

so, you know, you build a big model

and suddenly the whole thing becomes easy and containable.

But you don't want people to realize that they're miniatures, so...

You know, fortunately, Richard Taylor's team did a wonderful job,

you know, at recreating a lot of these miniature environments.

So these rushing POVs were achieved

by using a snorkel lens mounted on a motion-control camera

which would fly over a miniature.

Because of the depth of field requirements

so that everything in the miniature was sharp,

from the foreground right the way to the background,

we had to use very long exposures on each frame.

So we'd shoot maybe one or two frames a second.

Just like a 10-second shot would maybe take 30 minutes to shoot.

Another one of my favorite special effects shots in the film

is a very simple one again, but I just like it because it's kind of like...

To me, it's really a simple trick

that's totally believable,

and it's the shot where the camera's racing through the cemetery

and goes right up to the cop car, and we see Lucy in the back of the car.

We did a shot on location in the cemetery, where we had, you know, the camera

on a motorcycle, and it was racing through the graveyard

and going up to the car, and it wasn't really fast enough,

and it wasn't, sort of, a spectacular enough shot.

It didn't feel Reaper-like

because it's the Reaper's POV as he's rushing towards her.

We ended up shooting a lot of footage with a model cemetery for other shots.

And so I decided we'd have another go at doing this shot with the miniatures.

So that shot's actually a totally model shot

with a computerized, you know, Trini stuck into the car.

I think there's probably quite a few shots in THE FRIGHTENERS

that people have never realized are actually model shots.

You have to take great reward

in the fact that the audience

don't realize that they're miniatures, because in doing so,

you have been totally successful.

But at the end of the day, it leaves you a little bit hollow

'cause you're wondering if people actually realized

the incredible workload that's gone into some of the shots.

It's a lot of fun to cast the villains in any movie

because, you know, it's one thing for an actor to come into an audition

and be nice and sweet and gentle,

but it's a lot more fun when they have to play pure evil.

And I remember Jake Busey

really impressed us with his eyes, primarily,

the manic intensity that he can generate with his eyes, and...

You know, when you are genuinely freaked out in an audition,

you know you've definitely gotta cast this guy in the movie.

I guess that makes you number one.

When you see a role like Johnny Bartlett

and, you know, it's a character who is

portraying himself within the film

to be the Grim Reaper, and that's death itself,

this guy considers himself to be a pretty evil guy.

You know, you drive from reading it,

so I figured, "Okay, this character is

"as evil as you can possibly get, with no remorse."

Now, shut up.

That Russian cannibal creep's running around saying he did 50 plus.

That reflects badly on the both of us, Patty.

This record should be held by an American.

I quite agree.

The role of Patricia was a role that

in the context of the film, is like... It's a red herring role.

This is a person that we absolutely wanted the people to like.

Well not. They didn't have to love her

but we wanted people to sympathize with her, so that...

She's a victim, and it's like this poor woman

who's, you know, had this terrible, unfortunate past,

but really, her mother is the problem now,

and she really deserves to have a break, and she's not evil anymore.

We wanted this whole, sort of, like, victim thing to come across and then

wait until the third act of the movie to suddenly reveal her

as the genuine, you know, evil villain of the film.

And so the red-herring role demands, you know, careful casting.

Because if you cast someone who we're used to seeing as a villain

then it's going to give the game away too soon.

And we went the opposite direction. We wanted to cast somebody

who we're used to thinking of as a sympathetic person

and, you know, who better than the mom from E.T.?

I had a ball with this character.

First of all, it's an actress's dream, because you start out

as the poor, simpy, weak victim, and make this whole arc

over to the strong murderess.

She had a lot of fun. She had a lot of fun, I think, dredging up the evil,

that's probably all the stuff she's stored up ever since E.T.

that she finally got to put onscreen.

I think they came up with an amazing transition that you bought,

you know, because there were layers.

As... The more she got more involved with Johnny again, the layers came off.

And Fran, actually, was very instrumental in helping us

design and find the look for this character.

And the boots, the boots which,

I must say,

that I fought a little bit and she insisted on, just ended up totally

representing what she became at the end of the film to me.

When they said they wanted to put a long black wig with gray in it,

I went, "Oh, do we have to go there?"

But it really, so totally worked for the character.

Frank!

Basically, I think, Patricia was one messed-up broad.

And she was a sicko.

You know, what can I say, she went around murdering people

when she was 16, 14, whatever it was.

And I don't think she ever recovered from that, and just got more immersed

and more immersed, and this whole character

that she is at the beginning of the film is a facade.

It's a great acting gig that she's got going

so she can live this double life, you know,

and keep this love affair going with Johnny.

There's a knife-stabbing scene in the kitchen

where you don't really know what's happening,

and she pulls out this knife and she's gonna go kill Trini,

but then we get sidetracked, and she starts stabbing me with it.

But I'm a ghost and she's not.

So it's kind of strange, but it's like this...

With each stab, it's like this sexual thing that's very eerie and weird.

I had to go back and do this scene without Jake,

hit the marks, hit the timing.

Like, for instance, when I'm stabbing and hit where his chest...

One time we did it, Peter kept saying,

"No, that's his belly button, Dee.

"Do it a little higher." And you have to stay in character

while you're listening to all this.

It was an R-rated movie, and they still cut this scene.

It was like one of my favorite scenes.

It was just done in a way that

was very sexy and fun and funny.

And it didn't survive. So if it goes back in the LaserDisc, I'll be very happy.

We started brainstorming with Peter and everything,

and stuff started evolving

and just becoming more sick and twisted on a daily basis.

You're next, pal.

Take him out, baby.

There is the chasing-young-Patricia-around-the-morgue.

I'm chasing her, and that's how you see

that these two enjoy the thrill of.

It's like being little kids and running around and playing tag and whatnot

except it's with cutlery.

So I'm chasing her around this thing and grab her

and we start kissing and all that,

and this whole love scene type of thing,

except that I put her up on the,

whatever you call it, the dissection table

where there's all these

steel rungs, and it's all covered with blood,

and so we're kissing and everything, and the camera's going around us

and we're wiping blood on each other by accident.

And so I spent the entire day covered in blood, kissing this girl on this table.

It was weird, but we laughed about it at the end

and I'd like to see this scene cut together.

I haven't yet. I'd be interested to see it.

I always managed to get hurt, one way or another.

I got some of the biggest bruises I've ever had in my entire life

on this movie, and

the make-up artist took pictures of them for future reference.

Trini would come in, like, the following morning

and she'd pull up her sleeve and she'd show me all the bruises

that had, like, developed during the night.

And sort of make me feel really guilty.

And... Although she wasn't complaining and she kept on going.

I was really worried about

pushing her around a little bit, boy, but she...

She gave as well as she took. So she was really a trouper about that.

And I really appreciated it. I mean, she would just say, "Do it.

"Do it, do it harder."

The biggest fright that I had with Trini was

the fight in the bedroom

where she has to run across the bedroom,

pull the key out of the door

and slam the door shut, just as Patricia is pushing it shut.

And on this one particular take, Trini ran across the bedroom and

the key got stuck.

And she just got it out as the door slammed shut,

and it would've probably broken her fingers if she'd been like a second slower.

- You all right? - Yeah.

- Oh, my... - Cut.

The fight with Dee Wallace Stone was really, really fun.

She really got into it, and so did I.

It was kind of scary, because most of the time

she had a huge knife in her hands.

You really have to trust somebody.

We were working with real knives part of the time.

I was really depressed after we were done,

because I just thought, "Oh, man, we have to go back to dialogue.

"This was so much fun."

When it was over with, she looked at me

and I looked at her and went...

Oh.

You know, we didn't want...

We liked doing that.

We liked being strong women

in the film, and

holding our own and working together like that.

The scene in the movie where the Reaper is finally revealed to be Johnny Bartlett

was a very difficult one.

I wanted to have the Reaper shot with a machine gun

and then to have this blob of slime

hit the gravestone and turn into Johnny's face,

and have the face slide down the grave.

The idea is that his face has been sliced off

with a machine gun

just in front of his ears.

A tricky effect.

And to achieve this, we initially thought we'd do it with a gelatin appliance,

and then, using a blue screen board

that was attached firmly to a helmet cast of Jake's head shape,

we could, with fine filaments

give the feeling that his face was moving

and undulating, as if writhing over the stones.

The technique worked like 60% successfully.

But it certainly wasn't good enough for the movie.

It was originally conceived to be a simple comp

that we'd shoot the actor in a prosthetic on blue screen

and then composite that over the background.

The whole thing would be shot in motion control.

It was obvious early on that it wasn't really going to come together like that.

We were supposed to do a morph.

He comes down and goes around the corner.

We were supposed to cover that corner piece with a morph.

But it just didn't seem to work

when I sat down to do it.

So ultimately I had to do

the whole thing in 3-D, which was good, 'cause I wanted to do it that way anyway.

The Johnny face involved building a head,

and then projecting the footage onto that head.

And then basically taking

everything outside the face area

and making it big and blobby, so that it could flow down the grave

and leave blobs of black ectoplasm behind.

Good work. Got me to score a 40.

That sequence was, you know, difficult enough to achieve,

but it led to an even more difficult sequence,

which is what happens to this slimy, gooey face under the ground.

The idea was that different slimy pieces of the Reaper

are scuttling together and forming into Johnny,

and Frank Bannister jumps on top of him

and fights with him, and all the time the slime is joining on to the creature

and it's gripping around Frank

and trying to encapsulate him.

I imagined it to be like fighting a guy who's made up of sticky chewing gum,

so that you get these tendrils of slime coming off

and you're punching it, and your hand's getting stuck...

We drew some quite nice drawings to illustrate all this.

That whole scene was like, you know, really a nightmarish scene to work on.

It was technically much more difficult than what I actually imagined it to be.

Since I'd spent so long on the face shot,

I was turning into an expert on Blobman.

So I had pretty clear ideas

on how, technically, the crypt sequence should be done.

Since it was shot in quite a general way,

Michael fighting a blue-screen stunt double,

we had a lot of latitude in what technique we could use.

It was a little different than just interacting with a ghost that isn't there.

I actually had a physical interaction,

physical confrontations with this thing,

and it had to be able to put me in positions

that I couldn't manufacture, you know.

So we got Charlie, my stunt guy, who's my size,

and we put him just completely in a blue suit. He was just like a blue thing.

And I fought with him.

I was doing everything within my power to try to curtail

Peter Jackson's imagination.

I mean, this whole idea of the arms getting

sunken into this blob,

and pulling out and leaving...

Leaving these big chewing gum-type attachments to the arm...

I'm just thinking logistically, you know,

the clock is ticking. The money, cash register, things are going off

and I'm just thinking, you know,

"Are we trying to get this in for the sequel of the movie or this movie?"

The computer guys were very nervous about whether this could be achievable,

and I don't understand the techniques, but, apparently, it involves

some very complicated code writing that they had to do at the last minute.

Something about textured met a balls.

I don't really understand it.

There was a very specific texture and surface property

that had to be applied to that, and met a balls don't usually texture at all,

because what happens is

you take the shape that you want to be blobby

and basically for every frame of the animation,

it's mathematically dipped in blobs.

So that a skin is built for every frame.

And because a skin is built for every frame,

it's like changing your clothes 24 times a second, you know,

you can't usually have a pattern on there

unless the character swims through the pattern, like,

like a whale swimming underneath the surface of the water

and you can see water caustics on it.

Whereas what we wanted to do was to have the same pattern

stay on the blobbed person,

even though the surface is constantly changing and evolving.

So that was the big technical challenge.

And that's why the decision was made,

with a rapidly approaching deadline, to try and write some custom code for it.

And it was really down to

Steve Regelous' confidence in his own abilities

to be able to pull that off in time.

Me and John were just sitting, having cup of tea out on the roof one day,

and it came to me, and I sort of

said to John, "Why don't we do this?"

And he said, "All right, yes, sounds like a good idea, we'll give it a go."

So I roughed out the process using existing software,

which was incredibly inefficient,

and needed a little bit of custom stuff here and there,

and then I was able to see if it was heading in the right direction

and then spent a couple of weeks

putting together the code that would actually do the texfield process.

There was two things in there that were

considered technically impossible at that stage,

and one of those was blending the polygonal

shape of the blob guy himself into the blobs

which were coming into his body.

The other was sticking the textures, which are like the image details

onto his body so that they'd stick

in their right places, because he was partly made of blobs.

Sticking textures onto blobs had never been done before.

So I still don't understand it, it's all gobbledygook to me.

The sequence works fine in the movie. I mean, it does the job for the film,

but it certainly didn't, you know, get quite as good as what I hoped it would be.

It wasn't quite like the stretching chewing gum.

I know that the computer guys were as frustrated as well.

I was quite looking forward to seeing all of this

when it finally got onto film.

And at the premiere, I was eagerly awaiting this shot,

or the shots with the blob guy in it, and

when I saw it there, I realized,

well, we could have got away with just using cheap tricks

instead of going through all that hassle, because it wasn't really all that obvious.

While it's good and courageous to attempt that sort of thing

quite late in the piece, you really should get it out of the way early,

so that you can spend all the time that we spent

debugging the code,

refining the whole thing and getting in,

you know, the final 10%, the final 20% of the shot that you want.

I think there's something

fundamentally creepy about the idea

of this Wall paper man character who ripples under the wallpaper,

or Car pet man, he's called when he goes under the carpet.

What was important with, I think, the Wall paper man animation

was to give us this sense of, you know,

a predator scuttling along.

So I know that I was really looking for

that type of feeling in the animation.

Someone scuttling is just a creepy concept in itself.

And to have him scuttling under the wallpaper,

it's kind of like they're in there, trying to get out.

The starting point for all the shots in this scene

is the plates that were shot on set.

This is an example of one of these.

This is a plate of Patricia running up the stairs.

Also, I'd be replacing the carpet

that she's running on in this shot entirely with computer-generated carpet.

The figure would be animated, say,

scuttling up the stairs.

And this is done in a package called Softimage

by our character animators. Christian Rivers did this shot.

And what you can see stepping through here, not in real time,

is the figure of Car pet man climbing up the stairs.

And the view in the top right of the screen, this view here,

has been set up to match the camera view.

And it would be animated so that it would just look like a human figure

running up the staircase.

Then this piece of software that I wrote was used

to wrap a surface over the top of that figure

with the tinting and webbing,

to look like it was actually a piece of carpet

that had been dropped over the top of that figure.

We then take the series of databases that are created

and set them up

with a lighting scheme that matches the lighting that was used

to light the background plate, on the set shoot.

The whole sequence is composited together

to give the final shot.

There's a couple of other things I've added,

computer graphics brass stair rods,

which ping off the stairs

and I've also added, after the composite, a 2-D camera move.

One of the most difficult aspects

of the Wall paper man sequence at the beginning

was when Patricia is being dragged along the floor

by Car pet man.

The way that we did that was to have a guy dressed up in a blue suit,

who just basically grabs Dee's wrists

and pulls her along the floor,

so we get, you know, the sense of her being dragged by somebody.

He was very sweet.

Very... Every... New Zealand men are very gentle

with the women.

They're very masculine, but they're very gentle.

And it was always,

"You all right? Are you okay? Am I too rough?" You know.

He was very sweet. It was cute,

but it was a little weird being hysterical with a blueberry.

We could have done this by, perhaps, rigging her on wires

and using the wires to drag her along,

but we felt we might not get the actual look of,

as if she was being held by the wrists and dragged.

It was then a case of removing him entirely from the plate

so that we were just left with Patricia, and we could add Car pet man.

We then applied very traditional computer graphics

texture-mapping techniques to the surface

to create the look of the carpet.

One of the challenges with animating the Portrait man shot

was

there was a lot of interaction

with the main character, which is Michael J. Fox's character, Frank.

Because they're actually engaged

in a very close, tightly-framed grapple with each other.

The plate I got to animate was just Michael J. Fox with a picture frame.

And Michael's performance basically gave me a lot to work with

in the way that he flinched and moved his head.

It gave me a lot of ideas.

You could sort of see when a punch was supposed to connect

because he would react by throwing his head back.

And there were a couple of other nice things

that, you know, sometimes you sort of think you wouldn't have thought of.

I think one of the advantages with all this effects stuff, you know,

and this whole idea of me being in New Zealand

is I'd be able to give the guys, sort of, constant feedback.

And certainly working through

scenes like this Wall paper man scene or the Reaper scene,

it was critical that they knew exactly,

you know, what they were doing every step of the way

and they didn't go off on a tangent, or in a wrong direction.

- ...straight back off, and he's... - Yeah.

It was very good that

our director was able to

not only be on-site and answer my questions

but he can go from workstation to workstation and work with every individual.

And that certainly saves a lot of time and money

when you can get it straight from the horse's mouth

as to which direction a particular effect should take.

One of the problems with the whole visual effects side of THE FRIGHTENERS

is that we never knew exactly how many shots there were in the movie.

This was partly because of the fact

we didn't have everything absolutely storyboarded throughout the film,

partly because we were developing the script and the story on the set

with the actors,

and partly because, once we started to edit the film,

we were taking some scenes out, and changing some other scenes,

and so we never had this figure locked down.

And we were really thrown for a loop when it was decided

to bring the release date of the film forward.

The film was always made as a Halloween release for October '96,

and

I think it was like the end of '95,

November or December '95, we thought we had 10 months left

and we had a lot of complex, you know, computer shots still to go,

like, maybe, 400 shots that we hadn't even started yet.

And Universal decided they wanted to release the film in summer

instead, in July, which gave us,

basically, you know, four months less time to do the same amount of work.

And that really, you know, threw everybody into a panic.

I know that it led

to a huge recruitment of extra people

in order to get the work done faster.

We looked around the world, in England, and France, and Australia, and the States,

to try and find the computer artists

that could come over and help us get the film finished.

In my experience, in recruiting drives,

it's usually very cutthroat.

As far as, you know, you go behind closed doors

and work in shadows and try to yank people

from their

from the womb of their CG studios.

Well, in this case,

everybody knew we were in dire straits, as far as trying to finish this film,

and

it was very nice that a lot of the film community

came together to help us out.

We just went through their front door and asked them,

"Hey, do you happen to have anybody to spare?"

What we were engaged in, essentially, was corporate raiding,

and we were doing it right in the middle of a time, which still exists today,

which is essentially a feeding frenzy on digital artists.

We were working 60 hours from the very beginning

and that was our starting point. We were moving up to 70, 80 hours.

We had some of our artists working 110, 120 hours a week

in order to complete the shots in the given time frame.

I know the words that Charlie used was "shit fight."

It was a shit fight.

It was certainly a leap.

And, you know,

maybe it was a little bit of foolishness

and overconfidence at the time, and...

But we did get away with it. I think we've, you know, done some okay shots

and they were done down here in New Zealand.

The only serious disagreement that Fran Walsh and I had over the script

was the Worm.

I thought that having this tunnel of light,

you know, transforming into the stomach of a worm

would be kind of a cool thing to do,

and I really liked the idea. And Fran was very much against it.

I remember that she thought it was too Freddy Krueger-like.

I don't think... She's probably never seen a Freddy Krueger film,

but, however, she didn't think it was in keeping with the style of the film.

So, this debate raged,

and it raged all the way through the shooting of the movie, in fact.

"Do we keep the Worm, do we throw the Worm out?"

I was the founding member of the "Save the Worm Society",

which had a membership of one.

It got to the point that we were filming the actors

against blue screen, reacting to something,

and I, you know, was determined it was going to be the Worm.

Other people thought we were going to change it to something else,

but we had to still shoot the actors reacting.

Screaming,

from above,

swallow,

watching,

down.

The express bus to hell.

No lines, no waiting.

And we didn't really know, even at that point,

exactly what they were going to be looking at in the final movie.

And that was... The Worm, in a way,

because we were all scared to confront it and have this big argument about it,

I think it got left to the very last minute.

It was probably the money shot in the entire film.

And we only had about three weeks to go from conception to final on that shot.

It was handed over to Gray

to try and whip something together for us at the very last minute.

He created this, like, this disgusting, slimy creature.

Getting the textures, and the shading, and the rendering right for this

required a lot of photo reference of real life.

If we were going to achieve computer-generated gore,

we had to go to a slaughterhouse. We had to take some pictures,

to get hand to hand in some offal

and just get a feel for what these things are like.

We had photographs taken

of everything which possibly looked icky and gory and nasty and bloody.

From these photographs, we created a huge digital image montage.

This was then projected as a texmap onto the inside of the 3-D surface.

The whole result of having these real textures,

you know, as part of the CG figure...

It gives you a sense of realism and a sort of organic reality

that doesn't look like a CG shot, necessarily,

but it looks kind of disgusting.

You are seeing real-life gore. You're seeing the insides of cows.

Bye, Frank!

Johnny. Johnny!

We were hanging on wires

and pretending that we were surrounded by these things, and Peter would be like,

"Okay, watch the worms, they're coming from the left, the right, be very scared."

"Now they're coming from underneath.

"And now, the sides are coming in.

"Look to the sides, they're coming in.

"Now they're going back out again, but now everything's enclosing on you."

You know, it's just...

That's what I mean. Half of you

has to be somewhere connected down here, to hear all that

and the other half of you has to be totally in La-La Land.

And hopefully the two of them come together.

When we first cut the movie together,

once the shooting had finished,

I think we were, like, looking at a two-and-a-half-hour movie.

Which was too long, and it felt too long.

You know, there were bits that were slow, bits that we clearly didn't need,

and we had to be tough.

And that's part of the process of film making.

Making movies is not about keeping every second that you've filmed in there,

it's about making something that works for an audience.

And generally you've go to, you know,

start to attack things that you're quite fond of

and the easiest way to do this shortening process

is often to remove characters,

or to remove entire subplots.

Because if you go in there

and you start trimming little bits and pieces off all the scenes,

the film can become very bitsy and rough

and it doesn't, you know... It doesn't really work

to do it that way.

The first victim of this process was the gatekeeper.

Two things were apparent.

One was that, generally,

the stuff with the gatekeeper was not essential to the movie.

Like, we could take the gatekeeper out

and still have pretty much exactly the same story.

And secondly, the gatekeeper seemed a little strange to us

when we looked at the finished movie,

because he is the only character in the film,

the only ghostly character that we had who was, kind of, not human.

You know, we had this rule that you die, you become a ghost,

you end up in the cemetery or in Frank's house or whatever

but you're there, as a dead person.

And, you know, what was the gatekeeper?

He was like a funny idea that we had, but it didn't kind of make a lot of sense.

And, so, he was targeted

for the ruthless process of elimination.

And that's what happened to him.

We should have a look at some of the gatekeeper scenes now.

The important thing to remember is

that I don't think any of these shots were actually finished.

They were not completed for the film.

They exist only as temp shots, which are very rough,

crude effect shots that we put together just so we could cut the film.

So, with that in mind, let's have a look at some of the stuff.

There were two sequences with the gatekeeper.

One, when Frank and Ray first come into the cemetery

and they've just left Frank's car and they're walking up the path,

and suddenly the gatekeeper jumps out to intercept them.

Wait. God damn it!

Hey, what did I just tell you, huh?

Stop!

State your business.

- Yeah, he's with me. - You are not welcome here, Bannister.

Come on, it's the guy's funeral. It'll be 10 minutes tops. Give him a break.

Come back.

So that was just the introduction to the gatekeeper,

and his big sequence happened later in the movie

when Frank has now become a ghost and returns to the cemetery at night.

This scene was originally conceived a little differently

to how it exists in the final film.

So it's interesting to look at it from that point of view.

It starts out

with Frank actually looking at the cop car from high in a tree.

He's a ghost, he's arrived at the cemetery,

and he's keeping a eye on Lucy, who's in the car.

Whoa!

Frank.

Frank! Is that you?

I'm doing this? I'm doing this!

I'm making the car move with the power of my mind!

Yes!

No.

Wait!

State your business.

It's me! Damn it! It's Bannister.

Holy Jesus! Who have we got here?

Listen to me, Hiles. I haven't got time for this crap.

There's an evil spirit coming down that hill right now, and I think he's pissed.

Shut up, you subhuman emanation.

You will not speak unless spoken to.

You unorganized, grabasstic gob of teleplasmic shit.

If there was an evil spirit loose in this town

I would be negligent in my duties.

Are you accusing me of professional incompetence?

Are you saying that I am one prize piece of anus breath?

Put this stinking piece of spook goop back in the goddamn ground.

No, that's not my grave.

Jesus H. Christ!

Who in the hell are you?

Sound off like you've got a pair.

A similar fate unfortunately happened

to the character of the Judge as well.

I mean, the Judge is a wonderful character in the film

and we had a lot of fun shooting his sequences,

but it became apparent when we looked at the final cut of the film

that the.

You know, that there was a lot of stuff that was happening with him

that was really not part of the narrative drive of the film.

And, even though it gave us a lot of pain to do so,

we went through a process of trimming his scenes out.

It's kind of interesting to look at the film,

you know, in a sense, the film that never was,

by going through some of the Judge footage.

In fact, the first time that he appears in the film is different.

At the moment, he comes racing into the living room,

firing his pistols.

We see that his jaw is missing. You know, the dog has his jaw.

And that was originally going to be the second time we saw him.

The first time was when Frank was on his way to the shower.

The shots of the dog were never finished in these scenes, either.

Oh, man!

Morning, Judge. The dog's got your jaw bone.

After that introduction,

the Judge was pretty much in the movie, as he is now.

We meet him, he talks to Frank by the fireside,

and then,

I remember there was a little piece that's missing from the film that I always liked,

where he's in the car with the ghosts

after they've encountered the Reaper for the first time.

That was not an emanation. That was some sort of a spirit.

A dark spirit!

Dark spirit, my ass!

That was the Grim Reaper, son.

The specter of Death.

That little piece of dialogue was just, you know, taken out for pacing reasons.

The action then goes to the museum, and we have it pretty much the way it is

with the Judge coming and shooting the Reaper, and enabling Frank to escape.

The sequence, however, did not finish

with the Judge being chopped in half, as it does now.

It actually carried on a little bit further.

Judge!

Judge!

God damn it! I've lost my vitals!

Let's get outta here.

Bastard!

We quite liked the idea that the Judge,

even though he's chopped in half, is still alive

because he is a ghost, after all.

However, being a half guy is probably a bit of a handicap,

and so the Judge heads off to the cemetery.

We don't see any of that, we just...

He lets us know that he... It's time to head back to the coffin.

And he was due to make a surprise appearance

in the cemetery later on in the movie.

That begins when Frank Bannister is thrown into the ground

by the gatekeeper.

-Judge! - Will you get the hell out of my grave?

Judge, God damn it! Listen to me.

Take your filthy fingers out of the lady's blouse, Mister.

God damn it!

Evening.

There were a couple of interesting little shots with the Judge

towards the end of the cemetery scene, as well

when Frank is talking to the Johnny Bartlett face.

I gotta hand it to you, Frank.

You've taken out Death himself.

This ain't Death.

Who are you?

It was kind of difficult to actually shoot those shots with John Astin.

In a way that, you know, it was believable that he was just walking on his hands.

And we made quite a complicated blue screen rig,

which involved John swinging from a little, sort of, a crane

so that his weight would be floating

and he was able just to use his hands to be lifting himself off the ground with.

It was quite ingenious.

It would have worked quite well if we had actually finished all the shots.

And the Judge's final appearance in the film

was gonna be in the denouement,

where, in addition to having Frank's house being torn down

and the sheriff turning up to say farewell,

there was going to be a sort of an emotional farewell,

a touching little moment between Frank and the Judge.

I always said you'd never finish that house, Frank.

I'll be right back. Come on. Back, back.

I'd call it finished, Judge.

This is goodbye, son.

I'm hitting the trail with Rustler.

Aren't you gonna need your legs?

Well.

Me and my vitals have come to a parting of the ways.

They're going east and I'm heading west with Rustler.

Rustler.

I'm really glad that John Astin's lovely work as the Judge

can be seen, finally, you know, on this LaserDisc.

The editing process didn't stop with the cut

that we were doing in New Zealand.

We had to take the film to the States for the dreaded previews.

Now, we had Bob Zemeckis there, and

I found the process very interesting

because, you know, you don't

spend two years designing a car

and then put it on the market without a test drive.

You know, it makes sense to actually find out if there's any faults,

to find out whether the audience is responding

in the way that you want them to respond,

because you certainly lose objectivity when you've been working on a film for so long.

And the previews didn't really cause us

any great concern.

One interesting thing that did develop

was this whole issue of the swastika

that was on the palm of Dammers' hand.

Milton Dammers has a swastika on his hand.

Right here. Little, crudely made...

Mansonesque swastika.

And there was... Actually, in this special edition,

there is a little more explanation of it,

I hold it up...

to have her stop yelling, and she sees in the rearview mirror

as well as the audience, that I have a swastika there.

And I explain that my first undercover

assignment was

being part of the Manson family at Spahn Ranch, 1969.

I was the family's sex slave

for six months.

Six months.

In the service of my country.

Disguised as a filthy hippie.

It was interesting, because when they tested

this movie, audiences didn't get it.

They misunderstood.

They thought I was a Nazi.

Because I had a swastika.

And maybe because of the hair,

it sort of went right along with it.

All they saw was the visual, and they didn't get the verbal explanation.

So it was taken out.

But I guess it's back in.

Not all the scenes that we trimmed out of the film

are quite as exciting

as the gatekeeper, or even the Dammers' swastika stuff.

Some of them are a lot more mild, and you just simply don't need them.

A really good example of that was a very brief scene with Lucy

as she arrives at the police station.

Now, when you're writing a script, you always get bogged down on the logistics.

And we thought, "Well, she's not going to be able to run into the police station

"and go straight to Frank's cell, because they wouldn't allow her to."

So we've got to explain how she actually gets to the cell

and so we shot this little scene.

Dr. Lynskey.

I need to speak to Frank Bannister, now.

Agent Dammers says he's to have no visitors.

Look, I'm his doctor.

Sorry, ma'am.

Agent Dammers will be back in 40 minutes.

You could take a seat and wait for him.

Are you trying to deny me access to my patient?

Frank!

But when you see the movie playing, you just realize no one cares.

This is a really good example of the difference

between screenwriting and trying to theorize everything in the story

with actually watching a movie.

You just don't care. So you can easily just lift that type of stuff out.

"The mystery heart condition that has killed

over 30 people in less than four years

"has claimed another victim.

"Doctors are baffled as to why

"seemingly fit and healthy people are suffering massive heart attacks.

"Many of Fair water's residents are claiming that the shadow of Death

"has once again descended on the town."

What's this shadow of Death stuff? I don't like it.

It's what they're saying, Miss Rees-Jones.

There's a lot of scared people out there.

By now, most people have probably seen,

you know, this extended version of the film,

which we included in this special edition LaserDisc, and,

you know, those were all scenes that we took out originally,

like the... Frank with the letter from the bank

and the false Reaper gag that the ghosts pull on him.

And the driving with the Judge

and speeding up through the funeral procession.

They were lifts that we did simply for pace.

You know, they were scenes that we didn't think were necessary, and,

I certainly think, theatrically,

the film is better without those scenes in.

But it was fun to sort of include them in this LaserDisc,

because in themselves, they're quite fun.

And I think the medium of a LaserDisc, of watching a film on TV,

and especially a film that you've presumably already seen

and you can now see a slightly different version of it, is part of the fun.

And, you know, while the theatrical

version is still like the director's cut of the film,

I'm really happy that some of the stuff,

you know, we were able to include here, because it was kind of fun.

HEAVENLY CREATURES was my favorite film the year it came out.

And, in fact, it became one of those

benchmark things that,

if you're talking with people and you want to judge their tastes,

you know, you say, "By the way, did you see HEAVENLY CREATURES?"

And if they said, "Yeah, I saw it, I thought it was terrible",

I'd know that they had no taste

and there was no point in talking any further with them.

Because if we thought at all alike, they'd go, "Oh, yes, fantastic film.

"I just loved that film, it was great."

And, I kind of

told my agent, I think

that whoever this guy is, I don't know who he is, but whoever he is,

I'd love to work with him

on anything, any day.

And, it was one of those situations where I got a call,

asking if I was interested in working with Peter Jackson on his next film.

They told me a little bit about it

and I said, "I don't even care what it is.

"Yes. The answer is yes."

I was really delighted that Danny Elf man wanted to do the music for the film because

I think more than just about any composer you could name

he has a real affinity for the tone of our movie.

I mean, if there is one guy that understands

this delicate balance between comedy

and horror, it's got to be Danny.

When I first saw the first cut of FRIGHTENERS

which was at Peter and Fran's house in New Zealand,

and it was pretty wild, because I flew out there from Los Angeles for

17 hours on the ground and flew back, basically to see the movie.

So I got there and I was really kind of

a little floaty,

but it was really fun, I went to their house and I met them

and I just adored them both.

And they showed me the movie on video.

And I realized, right there when I saw it,

that I had my work cut out for me, that it was...

It was going to be a difficult, time-intensive film.

But I was also very excited, because I like challenges

and I knew that it just was not going to be an easy, you know,

I-could-just-whip-through-this kind of score,

that it meant really kind of nailing it and changing the directions a lot

and shifting from one tone to another

and trying to make it clearer for the audience what type of movie it is

that they are getting into, right at the top.

I wanted to make sure that the music tied the film together tonally

that the music acknowledged the film for what it was

and that it helped the audience go along for the ride.

What film music does is consciously or unconsciously

lead the audience down the path you want them to be led.

And in every movie,

and within every movie, that's completely different. Sometimes,

the problem is

you really want them to know that it's okay to laugh at something.

Or sometimes, you specifically don't want them to,

or sometimes, you want to mislead them.

In other words, the music can... You could be watching a woman

washing the dishes in her kitchen

and whistling, or kind of humming along to herself.

And nothing particular is happening, but the music can tell you that

something horrible is about to happen to her,

or give us the impression that nothing horrible is about to happen

and that this is a very, very normal moment

to take us off guard

for something horrible that does happen all of a sudden.

So we have quite a bit of ability.

Or it can tell us

that there is something really crazy going on in her head

that she is thinking of something

tied to another piece of music that we've heard

earlier in the story, that even though we just see her washing the dishes,

she's thinking of somebody or something.

So it has this strange ability to lead us down many paths

while watching the same bit of footage.

It can make a violent scene more violent, it can make a funny scene funnier.

Or, what's very important in a movie

with a very difficult or odd tone,

it could let one know, in THE FRIGHTENERS this was the case at the beginning

of the movie, people aren't quite sure what type of movie they're getting into.

In the movie TO DIE FOR it was certainly the case,

and many of Tim Burton's movies were.

You're trying to simply let the audience know.

What type of movie are they getting into?

Thank you, Bannister, you can go.

What the hell you staring at?

- What's with the number? - What number?

Look, if you're trying to freak me out, it's not gonna work, okay?

You know, he's trying to get more money out of us, is what he's trying to do.

Get your shit. Get the hell out of my house.

- Come on, move. - Ray, just...

I always hope

that something I work on isn't going to sound just like something else.

But there are genres and it's impossible to avoid.

Obviously, a dark comedy, like THE FRIGHTENERS,

I can't totally, 100% get away from other dark comedies,

let's say of Tim Burton, that I have done

where there is going to be some crossover.

But whether it be BEETLEJUICE or THE NIGHTMARE BEFORE CHRISTMAS

or DARKMAN, or NIGHTBREED,

there's going to be some amount of crossover.

But I always go, "That's okay. I am the same composer."

When I grew up, I used to listen to Bernard Herrmann scores

and I would be able to tell that it was the same composer

in all the science fiction films in the '60s of his

that I grew up on.

So, on the one hand, I don't want them to sound too similar.

On the other hand,

I can't make them sound like they're all completely from separate people because

I don't have more than two or three people living inside here.

So, you know, I wish I had 10, but I don't.

I have only two or three that have to get along and they usually divide up the work

depending on what type of film it is, and what type of score it's going to be.

Frank, watch out!

Fran and I were in Los Angeles for some of the post production of THE FRIGHTENERS,

and we went round to Danny's house

and basically sat down and watched the entire movie with him, and figured out

where the bits of music should go, and what type of music it should be.

You have a thing called the spotting session with the director

very early on in the process, and you go scene by scene,

and the director will go,

"I think there should be mood music here, maybe starting with this,

"going through here and playing this element

"and let's make it emotional or big or funny or small."

You talk about what you're playing in the scene,

or what you're not playing in the scene.

And then occasionally,

I'll go, "You know, maybe there shouldn't be music here,

"or maybe there should be some here,"

and the director would go, "Yeah, that's a good idea."

You just kind of talk it through, and you explain to each other

why there should or shouldn't be music, in your opinions.

For some reason, I don't know why

we ended up with a lot of music in THE FRIGHTENERS.

Particularly a lot of "starts," they call it,

which are just the individual cues.

I guess it's something to do with the pace or the momentum of the film.

I make up this huge board, and on this board is all the names of all the cues

with a box next to it.

And then there is the dates on the top,

and the number of days left to the scoring date.

And it becomes like a countdown.

And so, here's the cue, how long the cue is,

and a box that I'll check off as I finish them.

And here is the number of days, so at the end of each night,

I check off another square, and I count... "27 days left."

And then I'll go, "Okay, I've done this much music, and this is...

"These are the empty boxes, there's this much left," and I'll either go,

"Oh, my God, I am totally off schedule," or I'll go, "Okay, okay,

"I'm barely on it. If I skip one day, I'm screwed.

"But if I stay on this pace, I'll make it."

And it's just a way to pace myself.

And to have the confidence that I am going to finish on time.

Or do I have to, like, stay up all night? Or do I have to adjust to it?

So she delivered the board the first day with all the cues.

And I just said, "Shit, I've never seen one like that.

"This is, like, 50 starts." And there was no particular reason,

it was just... That's just the way it was, you know?

One of the most exciting things, I think, on THE FRIGHTENERS

was the recording of the music,

which we did at the Sony recording stage,

and I think it was like the actual stage that was used for BEN-HUR,

and, I don't know, THE WIZARD OF OZ,

I think somebody said, back in the '30s.

And so it had this history and this atmosphere,

and we had a really big orchestra, I don't know, 100, 110-piece orchestra.

That was really a lot of fun, and it was about five or six days' worth of work

and I just found it incredibly entertaining.

It's like, you know, your own private sort of concert, I guess.

We gotta get mezzo piano.

We then took the finished music recordings back to New Zealand

because the final mixing and dubbing of the film

actually happened down here in New Zealand.

And I remember Danny was really generous,

because the last thing he said to me

before I left with, like, all these tapes of his music was,

you know, "When you're mixing, don't worry if you wanna drop any of the music."

Because I think he's very aware

that a film can be too full-on in terms of the music, it can be too intense.

The reality, in the end, was that only one

of Danny's music tracks was actually dropped in the final mix.

It's the scene where Lucy finds the knife in Old Lady Bradley's closet.

You know, it was one of those situations where we tried the scene with music

and we tried it without.

And keeping in mind what had just gone before and what was about to happen

in the film, we just thought it was possibly gonna be more effective

without any music at all.

Mother.

Coffee's ready.

It would be fun now, just for the completists in the audience

of this LaserDisc, just to play that cue where the music

is not heard in the finished movie, we could play it here

and have a listen to that track.

I'll make you some coffee, mother.

Mother.

Coffee's ready.

Lucy, go.

I don't think there should ever be a conflict between sound effects and music

because the two have different things to offer the film.

I always find that music connects directly with your emotions,

with the emotions of the viewer. It helps to

accompany you on this journey through the film

and to suggest things that you should be feeling, and to help enhance that.

I find that sound effects, to me,

have an emotional connection as well,

but it's, like, one step removed from the music.

I look at the scene and I just go, "This music will work for this scene."

What else they put in it, I have no control over.

And I just kind of hope it all works itself out.

You know, as I say, at the same time I am working on a scene

and devising this music, that I think to me, makes the scene come alive,

there's a whole other team, simultaneously working on many tracks

of sound effects, that to them, is making the scene come alive.

So for me, it works best with just music.

For them, it'll work best with just sound effects.

And both of us have to live with the fact

that they're all gonna get put together.

And scene by scene, moment to moment,

one will survive and the other will,

you know, not survive, to various degrees.

And you just hope that

there is a good set of ears balancing it all out at the end.

But that's kind of the way it works. There really isn't the time

on most films

to really let one finish, and then the other one start, or vice-versa.

We're all...

The way movies are, it's...

Everybody's like, jamming at the end, there, we're working really hard

and just trying to make our deadlines. And that's the reality of movie making.

The "tunnel of light" scene is a good example, where music and effects

were deliberately designed to work together.

We were very lucky in having Randy Thom

do the sound design for us on THE FRIGHTENERS.

And he came up with the idea of

keeping the tunnel down at the lower end of the spectrum.

The bass rumbles, the vibrations of the power of the tunnel

and the cracking open of, like, the fabric of the atmosphere.

With that in mind, Danny designed the music to be at the higher end.

So it was the strings and the choir.

And so you have separation between the two,

the two are not muddying each other up.

I think that's a very good example of how,

with a little bit of thought beforehand,

the music and effects can work very well together.

There was an effect, for example,

that was played for the sound of the Grim Reaper.

But, when you're working with an orchestra,

there's not much you can do. You know, the orchestra takes up a certain range

and it's hard to kind of play around effects.

If you know that it's going to be, really, a low effect,

you know, you might try to avoid low instruments, or something,

or if you know it's going to be a very high effect.

But, very often, we just have to

plow ahead, do the best job we can

and just hope that in the dub at the end, that it all gets sorted out.

Something that would be quite fun to do, I think, and it kind of,

you know, might illustrate some of the stuff we've just been talking about,

is if we played a scene in the movie with just the sound effects

and then we played it again with just the music.

It's kind of an interesting comparison.

And it sort of, I guess, illustrates the...

The difficulty of trying to make everything work and everything balance.

And a good scene to use is the opening scene, where there's a thunderstorm

and there's the Wallpaper Man, and the stuff crashing in the kitchen

and there's a hell of a lot of noise. Which you need.

I mean, it looks dumb if something falls and you don't hear it.

It doesn't seem right. You've got to have the sound effects

and they've got to be working well.

At same time, it's the opening of the film

and we wanted a big, grand operatic feel to the music.

But let's have a look at it first with the, just with the sound effects track.

No music at all.

Get off me.

Oh, please!

Please, don't hurt me!

It's wrong! She's too young.

The sins of the flesh will ruin her.

Please, don't hurt me. Please!

The wicked will be punished.

And now let's have a look at it with just the music track.

And with no sound effects.

Get off me.

Oh, please!

Please, don't hurt me!

It's wrong! She's too young.

The sins of the flesh will ruin her.

Please, don't hurt me. Please!

The wicked will be punished.

I thought, at the end of the day, it was really,

you know, well mixed by Randy Thom

and you know, I think it really does the job.

Get off me.

Oh, please.

Please, don't hurt me!

It's wrong! She's too young.

The sins of the flesh will ruin her.

Please, don't hurt me. Please!

The wicked will be punished.

Why us? I mean, why are they in our house?

Why us? Why us?

I hear it all the time, Mrs. Lynskey, I tell you...

Usually emanations are confined to the...

Keep going.

Usually emanations are confined to the cemetery, but they do escape.

I see them on this... You see... Your young ones.

I see them on the street,

in people's gardens.

In people's gardens... I see them at Farley's Thrifty Mart.

Farley's?

I mean Granger's.

- Farley's? - Farley Granger.

- Sorry. - I see them at Granger's Thrifty Mart.

- Granger's? - Yeah.

Saturday night, you see them huddled around the pet food department.

I can't figure them out.

Frank, you should disarm... Hairball.

Come on now, Lucy. I don't know why you keep shutting me out.

I mean, I still have a lot to...

- Keep rolling. Keep going. - Still rolling.

You know nothing of my situation!

We got a lot of gutless, we got a lot of... Shit.

Lot of lives.

All right. Back, back, back, back, back, back,

back, back, back, back, back, back, back.

Why can...

Okay.

It wasn't funny.

Fuck me, sorry.

I think one of the funniest

bloopers that...

that happened in THE FRIGHTENERS,

and it happened a couple of times, was when...

Was when Michael forgot what film he was in.

We were doing this scene with

the Judge, and I'm supposed to call out to him, and I just kept

saying, "Doc"

from BACK TO THE FUTURE. It was like some weird out-of-body thing.

A little quicker than the Pony Express, huh, Doc?

Whoa! I called him Doc.

I'd just go, "Doc! Judge, shit."

Hey. boys! Freeze up!

Doc!

Doc. I did it again.

I know, I know, it's the way I look. It's this

damn ectoplasm stuff.

It turns you off, doesn't it?

Come on, Lucy, you're not listening to me!

Look, baby, you know we have a great relationship. It's just that

lately, I don't feel that you've been giving it 100%.

I guess a blowjob's out of the question.

And action!

"Here's Johnny." I had to just do one, sorry.

Yeah, all right?

Hi. Now I'm acting.

Action.

And action!

Frank! Frank, listen to me. I found your knife.

It was hidden in Old Lady Bradley's...

Oh, I'm sorry.

I had to get hit by this skeleton.

The special effects guys had this skeleton, and they...

They were on top of it. They padded the skeleton

so that when it hit me,

it wouldn't hurt me.

But they padded it, like,

too low, or something. So when this thing came,

it was like being hit in the head with a baseball bat.

Stuart can't take much more of this.

I think he's gonna blow!

I did it.

I did it.

I heard shooting,

I forgot my line, of all things. Sorry.

Hey! Hey, partner!

Hope you're having fun... No, no, one more.

Here we go. Keep rolling.

All right, kid, quit jumping around and acting like a baby.

This is serious.

You should go and stand over there, Charlie.

Quick, jump over there with Noddy.

Who's this?

Who's this?

Up high, up hi, Noddy. Up high.

That's it. Big smile!

Let him bounce, let him bounce. That's good.

Jump. Jump. Start to jump.

See, you've been watching too many SHAFT movies. That's it...

No. I'm talking about... Oh, fuck.

I hate that. I'm sorry.

I remember the close-ups on

the mouth and the eyes.

Peter,

to do that scene, he wanted to get all these

different perspectives of Dammers

and, you know, close-ups of the eyes, and close-ups of the mouth and...

And strange points of view, and hand-held, shaky, bizarre,

disconcerting stuff. But,

you know, he'd do these set-ups

and like, he a did a real tight set-up of Jeffrey's mouth.

And it was so ridiculously funny

that Peter kept laughing and wrecking the takes.

Well, I started to giggle and I've never told anybody why I started to giggle.

The reason was, as I was watching the close-up of the mouth on the monitor

and I suddenly became aware of a little dribble of saliva

that was forming on Jeff's lower lip.

And I suddenly

wasn't listening to the dialogue anymore.

I was just watching the progress of this

little drip of saliva as it made it's way down from his lip

to his chin.

And I started to wonder whether Jeff had noticed it was there.

Or if he could feel it. It was just going. And I was

starting to suppress a giggle. I could feel it coming.

And then, I think,

it got worse, because he suddenly wiped it away with his finger.

And from that point on,

I was just fighting, trying not to laugh.

But I couldn't make it to the end of the take. I'm sorry.

Why are you shaking?

Michael Fox turned to me at one point and said,

"You know, I've never been on a set where the director's giggling

"has made the actors crack up before."

And so, then he got it under control, and then Michael,

Michael went off.

And so, I lost it on that. He had to take a walk.

And I could even hear him, like,

way over on the other side of the sound stage, sort of muffling a laugh.

But what about the guy in the toilet?

I know...

Keep rolling. Do it again.

And action.

We know you didn't like her.

So we finally got the mouth shot.

But things didn't get any better, because we moved on to the eyes.

And I was in this totally vaporous kind of mood.

And I suddenly started to notice, as we were filming,

that Jeff's eyes were moving up and down

in sync with his voice. So they were acting like little mouths.

Twenty-eight cases involve crushed hearts,

arteries choked until they burst.

Those started in 1990 with your

beautiful wife, Debra.

So I'm watching these little eyes going like mouths

and I'm trying to suppress a giggle.

I mean, Jeff is trying not to laugh, as well.

I can see that. And that's making me laugh even harder. And so,

again, that one ended in disaster.

Why are you shaking?

You're doing it now.

You're looking a little pale.

There's a gas station. You gotta take a leak? I do.

Judge, just rest your bones.

Cut.

Hello, Billy.

Billy.

Billy.

Hello.

Hi.

He smiles.

Smile.

Hi, Billy.

Hi, Billy! Billy! Hi!

Hello!

Smile.

- What a beautiful boy! - I think he's gorgeous.

He's gorgeous.

He's a beautiful boy.

Yes. Who's a lovely boy?

- Billy. - Hi.

They'll never stay, man.

Dad, can we write his credit?

In most of the films that I've made, we've generally had one day

during the shoot which was kind of like, "the silly day."

On HEAVENLY CREATURES, it was when all the crew dressed up in drag.

The men dressed up as women and the women dressed up as men.

And it was kind of fun. And we've got some good footage of that

for the HEAVENLY CREATURES LaserDisc.

THE FRIGHTENERS, it happened on a...

On a day where we were shooting a serious scene, where

Johnny Bartlett's being taken to court and the massacre has happened in this hospital.

It's the black-and-white flashback to the '60s, and

we wanted quite a few extras to play policemen and journalists,

and cameramen, and we used the crew.

So, it's always funny for us to watch it

because we're actually looking at a lot of the crew, you know,

wearing the wardrobe and the costume and the make-up.

And they're actually quite good actors.

Find a blanket.

Get me a blanket, someone!

- Any comments, Johnny? - I got me a score of 12.

That's one more than Stark weather.

Guess that makes me Public Enemy Number One.

Get these people away! Get these people away!

Can you tell us anything whatsoever?

Keep these people back.

Oh, for heaven's sake, we're reporters.

For God's sake, we're supposed to get the news.

- Into the car, go on. - Follow the car.

FBI guys, back in the car.

I think one of the biggest causes of frustration

in the whole movie for Dee Wallace-Stone

was the pump-action shotgun that she had to use.

Well, let's start with, "Dee doesn't like guns."

Okay?

And every role I get, I have to use a bloody gun.

I don't know what that's about.

Well

don't like guns, and this was a big gun.

And they put some really loud rounds in it.

And I had about 30 minutes to work with the darn thing

before I used it, right?

You know, you get into these scenes, you have to go to La-La Land.

To go from who I am, to who Patricia was in this scene, it's like...

So,

I'm in and I'm doing this and I turn around and I...

It goes...

Oh fuck.

I think there were a few four-letter words flying around at that moment.

And we tried it two or three ways and you had to just, you had to

really pull the whole thing out for it to work.

You know, but I would get into the momentum of the scene

and I would want to do it so fast

and so professionally, you know, and that I would never

throw it quite as far as I had to.

So, by the time we really got it, I was...

I was Patricia. I was so pissed off at this gun.

Sound off like you...

Will you get a load of this?

He set us up, Lucy.

The man set us up!

This is our house.

I'm sorry. Shit.

Oh, shit!

- You okay? - Yes.

Lucy! Lucy!

I don't know what's going on. Why did the elevator stop?

Lucy had, like, one costume throughout the movie.

So it felt, because,

that pink jacket,

I wore it pretty much for the whole seven months,

and so, after a while the crew was like,

"Oh, is that a new sweater? Oh, you look good today," you know.

And it became a bit of a joke amongst the crew that,

you know, she'd turn up for work and she'd have to just wear the same clothes

every single day for like four months at a time and

on the very last day that she was working on the film,

the costume department presented her with a present,

which was this little Barbie doll.

And they had made a costume, a perfect miniature costume

of this pink jacket and they had dressed the Barbie doll up.

I was lining up her last shot in the movie

which was just a close-up of her in the back of the cop car.

And so I, you know, was looking at Trini and...

She had to duck out of the frame and then come up into the frame, so

we got ready to shoot it and I called, "Action."

Action!

And, relax!

REY'

honey.

I need to know

where you invested my money.

That $16,000 that I had saved.

The attorneys can't find it anywhere.

Oh, shit!

I blew it on a bad investment. But, oh, don't tell her that.

Tell her everything's gonna be... Fuck, my line. God damn it.

Fuck, I looked at the wrong place. I'm sorry.

In New Zealand, we have an ice cream company called Mr. Whippy

who drive around in little vans

and they sell ice creams at the side of the road and

they play...

They play a tune called "Greensleeves"

which was actually composed by Henry VIII., for those of you that need to know.

And anyway, that's the signature tune of Mr. Whippy.

Any time I was doing... Or they were doing, a close-up of me,

this truck would go by and make,

I forgot what noise it was. Some ridiculous noise.

I really need to know where you invested my money. The...

The $16,000 that I'd saved. I mean, the attorneys...

- I'm sorry. - What the fuck was that?

The truck seemed to follow Trini everywhere she went.

No!

I'm sorry.

That fucking truck follows me.

That was my curse on THE FRIGHTENERS.

Right from the very beginning, I'd set out to make

THE FRIGHTENERS as a PG-13.

I mean, you know, I've shot R-rated films in the past. And so, I felt

I had a reasonably good idea of how to shoot a PG-13.

I was deliberately avoiding any explicit gore,

any explicit violence.

But at the same time, I wanted the film to be as intense

as it could be

with those restrictions, and so...

We, you know, we did things that were non-explicit.

To try and crank up the tension, and try and, you know, create scares,

I guess. To make it frightening.

When we screened it for the MPAA,

we began this very

long and drawn-out process of trying to get a PG-13.

Because at first viewing, they said, "There's no way, this is an R-rated film."

The most ludicrous thing is,

we had to cut out the shotgun blasts in the door.

They said, "There's too many shotgun blasts in the door. This is R-rated."

And it's the first time in my life I'd even known that

blowing holes in a door was an R-rated activity.

In fact, we should stop showing these shots because this LaserDisc

will be NC-17 if we carry on.

I know Bob went crazy,

and it was just

so obvious to us that there was no way that we were gonna get a PG-13

version of THE FRIGHTENERS. Certainly not a film that we were gonna be proud of.

The rating system is very arbitrary in America.

It seems to be applied with

double, triple standards, all the time.

I was shocked that the movie... Well, let me put it this way.

I knew that they were making a PG-13 film.

But I also knew enough, from having worked on as many films as I have,

that they were gonna have a problem, because there's these elements. Now,

they ended up getting an R-rating and I know Peter was very frustrated by that,

because as he said, "if I was gonna make an R-rated film

"I would have made an R-rated film."

It would definitely have been more interesting

to make an R-rated version from the beginning.

Of course, at this point, we had no time to change anything.

The only thing that we did do, after we learned

that we now had an R-rated release, rather than a PG-13 release,

is we re-did

the shot of Dammers getting killed.

Originally, he was just gonna

be shot by a shotgun. And we weren't gonna see anything

other than just him being blasted back through the doors.

And now we had an R-rated film, I thought, well, you know,

"Damn it. Let's just do something a little bit more interesting for Dammers' death."

And we had a few weeks left before we had to deliver our last effects shot.

So we engineered a shot which was never a part of the original planning

where Dammers' head gets blown apart by the shotgun blast.

And that is definitely a result of us suddenly getting an R-rating

and being able to do that.

My 11-year-old daughter went with me to the opening of THE FRIGHTENERS.

And she said, "Oh, it's R-rated. ls there... If there's a section,

"I really shouldn't see, tell me."

And I said, "Well, if there is, I don't know which one it is.

"There's a couple of things which are kind of...

"Get a little violent, and stuff..."

"But I don't think it's anything that's gonna disturb you."

And she asked me,

at the end of the movie, "What was it in there they didn't want me to see?

"Nothing disturbed me."

She liked the movie a lot.

And I said, "Molly, I can never begin to try to second-guess

"what adults think that young adults get harmed by."

Because, the problem is, most adults forgot what it's like

to be a child or a young adult.

They've developed some concept of what it's like over the years

that has nothing to do with what young people are really like.

So, in fact,

in my mind, in my daughter's mind,

there was nothing in there that was, like,

over the top, that was gonna harm her. But that's not the way

the rating boards looked at it.

So it's kind of a shame, because, it did kind of cut out

a chunk of audience that I think really would have liked the film.

I would have really loved that film when I was 13 years old.

I mean, that was like, just the perfect 13-year-old Danny Elf man movie.

And I'm glad that I grew up in an era where we didn't have ratings.

Because, I wouldn't have been able to see half the stuff that I loved.

Hollywood didn't...

They didn't understand the film, because it starts out

like this kind of wacky comedy and then it goes...

And the story line turns to this very dark and twisted kind of thriller.

What a lot of people don't understand is those are Peter's two favorite genres.

The issue of the tone of the film

also upset a few people when they saw the movie.

I mean, I read reviews where the reviewer would say, you know,

"This film doesn't know whether it's a comedy or a horror film,

"and it sort of changes halfway through."

That seemed to annoy quite a few people.

The way that they said that the film

suddenly changes tone.

I never really thought of it quite like that.

THE FRIGHTENERS, to me,

is similar to HEAVENLY CREATURES in the structure of its tone.

In both HEAVENLY CREATURES and THE FRIGHTENERS,

we get to meet our characters with some humorous scenes.

We have, you know, comedy, basically. We have,

you know, stuff where they're having some fun

and we learn who they are. We get all that information early.

And then, gradually, the screws start to tighten in the story.

I don't think that's sudden. I just think it's gradual.

Over a period of time, the stakes go up.

This becomes a situation of life and death.

Frank Bannister has to stop the Reaper killing people.

You know, people are dying.

The town is getting panicky. He gets arrested. Dammers turns up.

And the mood is slowly becoming one which is...

Which is much less jokey.

But I think that's an honest transition, because there's nothing

in the movie, at that point, to laugh at.

That the stakes within the film itself are actually going up.

He has a great ability to combine a thriller movie

with comedic action. And that's what THE FRIGHTENERS was.

That was one of the reasons that I loved it.

And I didn't understand why people were confused, looking at it because

that's a real narrow mind, when you look at a film and you say,

"Oh, well, it wasn't comedy from start to finish."

Or, "Oh, well, it wasn't thriller from start to finish.

"It actually, you know, gave me more of a...

"An experience to watch it. So, therefore, I don't like it."

That's strange to me. I don't understand that way of thinking.

I loved THE FRIGHTENERS.

And I loved the fact

that we were able to have fun and do silly, wacky, funny stuff,

but at the same time, have this backdrop of complete manic insanity.

I am very proud of this movie.

And I think it's brilliant. And

I just think it was

a pyramid of misfortunes...

and bad timing and...

Which will all be resolved, I believe, when it comes out on video.

Because, I think people will then discover this movie for what it is.

This movie is very

wet and atmospheric, and it has just a, kind of...

Kind of a feel about it that's

autumnal.

One of the really great memories of THE FRIGHTENERS for me is,

you know, working with Bob Zemeckis and Steve Starkey,

who were both

incredibly supportive of what Fran and I were doing. They were very

respectful, I guess you'd say, of us wanting to make our film.

I guess Bob, being a director himself, was particularly conscious of

his role in the film,

I guess, as executive producer. And he was almost painfully,

you know, aware of not wanting to step on my toes, at times, but

he was also an amazingly knowledgeable resource

when we were cutting the movie.

And Bob sat in with us to look at the cut, you know,

and I paused for a moment and I thought, "Wow, you know, here's Bob Zemeckis

"actually giving me ideas for my movie." And that was really

that sort of input was just so helpful.

And those guys, you know, who worked very, very hard and were very supportive

of us right the way through to the end.

And, you know, I'll always be incredibly grateful

and have wonderful memories of their collaboration.

At the end of the day,

the one critic that I want to please is myself.

I want to always make a film that if I was gonna watch it tomorrow

it was somebody else's movie, I was paying my money, I was gonna sit down

and see this film called THE FRIGHTENERS,

you know, I know that I would really enjoy it.

I mean, that's the film I've made.

Something I would really enjoy if I went to see it.

With that in mind, you know, the box office

doesn't really mean that much to me.

It's lovely to have people say that they enjoyed it.

But at the end of the day,

the biggest tragedy would be

for me to make a film that I didn't feel personally proud of.

That would be where, I think, you know,

I've really gone wrong, and...

And THE FRIGHTENERS, you know, I'd love THE FRIGHTENERS if I saw it.

I would really, really enjoy it if it was somebody else's film.

So for me, you know, it's a film I'm proud of,

and that's the most important thing.