Original subtitles

Hey, I'm Simon Barrett. I'm the writer of The Guest.

I'm Adam Wingard. I'm the director.

And Adam and I met back in 2003 on the set of a horror film I wrote called Dead

Birds. He and our pal E .L. Katz were making a film called Homesick in Alabama

at the same time. So we were shooting rival horror features in Alabama.

And they came to our set just to kind of hang out and see what was going on. And

we just started talking about John Woo and stuff.

Well, yeah, I wasn't even supposed to be there because Evan was writing for

Fangoria.

And he was just kind of like, you know, he didn't want me just sitting at home,

you know, at my dad's house in Alabama. And he was like, hey, there's a real

film shoot out here.

You should come. We can just go hang out. And it gave me a lot of anxiety,

went anyways and pretended to be writing for Fangoria, you know, and hanging

out. Well, it's funny because they were like super awkward on a film set,

feeling like they had nothing to do. But I was the writer on that film, so I was

also standing around feeling super awkward and like I had nothing to do.

And, you know, because it was just a weird situation where I'd actually

to, I'd originally planned to make that movie myself for, like, very little

money. But then the script sold, and I was like, well, that's a no -brainer.

And, yeah, and then we just kept hanging out.

But you had, like, I mean, like, that movie had a budget. You had a big crew.

You had, like, a big special effects team. And, like, the homesick of the

I had just done with Evan was...

you know, a slasher film. It's very, very gory, and we just had all these

issues, you know, trying to do low -budget gore is just so difficult and

-consuming, and nothing ever goes right.

And so it was kind of delightful for me to see on the set of Simon's movie

because they happened to be doing a special effects sequence where, like,

somebody was getting their guts pulled out of him in the movie by a ghost, I

think. Yep, yep, that's correct.

And we were sitting there, and it was just not going right at all, and Simon

just had, like, a really good attitude with it, you know?

just were sitting off to the side looking at the monitors just kind of

and it was kind of nice to see it was like oh yeah no matter what what level

you're at as a filmmaker special effects uh never goes right you know and you

just have to kind of accept that yeah because fangoria we're coming to set

we you know we the producers have done the thing you always do when you're

having like a horror journalist visit which is they've scheduled like the big

gore set to impress the fangoria guys but then of course It's like four hours

delayed, and we're all just standing out in the cold. Yeah, like 5 a .m. Yeah,

it was literally like 4 or 5 a .m. when we finally got our first and only shot

off. And it was just instantly pathetic that director Alex Turner came to look

at the monitor and just went like, well, and then just walked back onto set.

And we were all like, hey, there you go.

And that kind of hit it. I mean, that was really the perfect note for our

working relationship to start off on because ever since then, I feel like

and I are standing at a monitor.

watching something go wrong, and we just kind of like look at each other like,

well, and like kind of walk to set.

Well, yeah, and you know, we both like kind of, like when we started talking

about movies on that set too, I remember we started talking about John Woo's The

Killer in particular, and that was kind of a...

a sign that you know like both of us were really enthusiastic about that and

kind of knew we were going to get along based on basically john wu and yeah at a

time when at a time when that wasn't like as much in in the popular culture

it is now you know i mean at a time when like the only way to see a lot of the

films that we were talking about was to like either track down vhs bootlegs and

like chinese supermarkets or order them through like you know a couple mail

order companies and we were doing that and we knew like how to do all those

things. And, you know, that was a like -minded thing.

And then, you know, we were just always looking for stuff to work on together.

And, you know, in 2010, we were able to kind of get our first collaboration

financed, A Horrible Way to Die, which is a kind of really small, serial killer

film that we did with Amy Simon. Well, it took us like two years to get that

financed, too, because we tried one year. The year before it actually came

through, you know, Simon had written it. And Simon and I were both kind of at

this point where, you know, we were just trying to get things going, you know,

and... And, you know, Simon's career had kind of stalled. I didn't have a

career. And we were both just like, you know what, the only way we're actually

going to get any of these movies made was we just have to go out there and

do it ourselves from the ground up. And so, you know, really Simon produced A

Horrible Way to Die almost more than anybody else. And, you know, I was kind

along for the ride on that aspect of it. But it was like, you know, forming the

LLC and all those things that you have to do. Like we really did it from the

ground up because...

And basically, the budget that we wanted, we weren't even able to get for

film. I remember it was kind of like the next year after it fell through, it

came back around. It was like, well, you can't get $150 ,000, which is what we

wanted. And instead, we ended up with about $70 ,000, I think, on that movie.

Yeah. Fuck it, we'll do it. Yeah, and that was literally it. And the way we

greenlit that project is we just flew to...

the city where we were making it and just kind of started.

You know, Adam operated camera on, I'd say, 99 .5 % of shots in that movie. I

mean, it was very, like, low budget, but, you know, it sold for a slight

and that allowed us the chance to do Your Next, which I think was, you know,

kind of more of the tone that we really wanted to explore.

And then Your Next, obviously, was enough of a success that we were finally

to really kind of examine.

Not so much what we thought we could sell, but what kind of film do we really

want to make as filmmakers?

Well, yeah, because we'd also been doing a lot of short films in the

intermediary, which is worth mentioning, too.

Leading up and during A Horrible Way to Die, we were making a lot of these

little short films, and even VHS kind of happened right afterwards, right before

Your Next and everything.

And Your Next actually was the first film where we said, okay, let's actually

try and just do something that's a bit more...

that doesn't rely on kind of experimental methods, you know, which

were doing not just because we like the kind of experimental style, you know,

within our movies, but it was also kind of the only way to make the movie for

the budget that we had. You know, you had to find creative ways to cut corners

that didn't look like you were cutting corners. Basically, you tried to make,

you know...

cutting corners a choice as opposed to, oh, this movie just looks cheap or

whatever. Yeah, so, you know, and that was, like, you know, I kind of view that

phase of our career as just, like, like watching you slowly stop operating

camera on every single stop because you operated a lot on your next but by the

time but after your next you know your next premiered well and sold well and

that was really like our dream for it and you know and that really gave us the

chance for the first time ever in our lives to say what kind of film do we

really want to be making what kind of story do we really want to tell yeah and

in a very kind of roundabout way that led us to the guest

The Guest started for me in about 2007, which, you know, Adam and I were friends

at the time.

He was doing Pomp School, and, you know, I was kind of just trying to write

scripts that I thought might sell, and I started writing this kind of revenge

thriller that was kind of an Iraq War era, you know, kind of anti -war drama

basically its construction.

And I realized very quickly that...

basically I didn't feel like I was writing a movie that I myself would want

see. And I didn't really know when I got to that point creatively why I was

writing it. So I got to about page 60, which is sadly not uncommon for me, and

then I just hit a wall and just gave up and forgot about it completely.

And then it was really just this weird phase of like, so you're next. I mean,

important part of the chronology here that we don't often dig into, but it is

relevant to us, is that you're next.

premiered and sold and was very successful and then sat on a shelf for

years. So it wasn't like we got the career boost of having made this

movie. Ultimately, Your Next was barely successful and kind of found its

audience later on video.

We kind of had this movie that had premiered well but was now purchased by

studio that was figuring out their release late in the wake of a recent

So we kind of were just sitting around with the producers of that film and

really trying to figure out what we wanted to do next.

Adam had kind of this epiphany of studying Halloween and the Terminator.

Well, what happened was during that period, too, one of the difficult things

that we were going through is that somehow all of our filmmaking choices

always been kind of derived from where we were as filmmakers and

what we could feel like we could accomplish.

And A Horrible Way to Die were movies that were kind of created around sort of

the idea that we could pull this off.

And I think The Guest was the first time where we started thinking bigger and

saying, like, well, let's not think just about the budget. Let's think about,

like, what are the actual movies we want to do?

And that was something that, I mean, at least for me, and I'm sure you probably

felt the same way, was something that I'd repressed for so many years.

I didn't have the ability to just fall in love with any story and just make it.

So in a weird way, it was like I kind of pushed that part of my personality out

and kind of had replaced it with what do I have that I can accomplish and make

something out of? And that was sort of the spark of the creative influence and

things. Whereas The Guest, it was like it kind of started this one night where

as we're kind of aimlessly trying to figure out what's next.

I was just watching movie after movie. And I was at the Snoot offices. That's

our producer's production company. They had this really cool big projector in

their office with like surround set up and stuff. And I'd go in there with a

stack of Blu -rays. And one day I just watched Halloween and Terminator back to

back and just kind of realized that, you know, those two movies kind of

encapsulated everything I'd liked.

So I just read Shock Value.

And Shock Value is a really impressive book from the perspective of that it

really breaks down specifically Halloween in such a brilliant way.

And it made me realize that...

The influences those filmmakers had were so important in creating this new sort

of iconic flasher film. And I realized that sort of in this weird way

that you could take the elements of Halloween and kind of

skew it into something totally new in the same way that they...

were taking their influences into it. Yeah, and Halloween and The Terminator

both in their own ways like low -budget films, but they're low -budget films

that permeated the cultural zeitgeist in a major way, and they don't feel low

-budget. And I really want to emphasize the point that Adam was making earlier,

which is I think a thing that set us apart from a lot of other independent

filmmakers is we were both forced, due to kind of our working -class

circumstances, to think very practically.

I mean, this is ridiculous to me now, but all the kills in the Your Next

script... were specifically designed to be kills that I thought I knew how to

physically build.

So whoever we hired to do our special effects, if they were terrible, I would

able to be like, I know how to do a blender gag.

You just put a hose in a fake blender.

And that's so ridiculous to me now, but that was creatively where we were at. It

was like, what do we know we can get?

And after the success of Year Next, it was almost physically painful for me to

put myself back in that hopeful, optimistic place of like, I can just

script and I don't need to worry about whether I have everything that'll be on

screen and someone else can figure those problems out. And it wasn't easy, but

an odd thing about it was it made me kind of start thinking about, like when

were talking about Halloween and the Terminator, it made me start thinking

that earlier era of kind of abandoned screenplays. And I was like, you know,

there's this one script that I always loved, but I never had the right

to it. And oddly, this notion of a slasher

A slasher with a robotic kind of almost military villain lends itself so well to

this weird dramatic concept and kind of grounding that kind of combining one

with the other is not as incongruous as it seems.

I was convinced.

I was convinced that, like, we could do kind of a Terminator meets in the Valley

of Allah, like, and get the best of both worlds. But, like, you had it, like,

basically, like, I came to Simon and I said, like, what if we do this crazy

cyborg on a loose but mixed with Halloween type of thing?

And Simon's like, I'm not interested in doing a, you know, a robot movie or

whatever. But I had this script. This is literally how it came about. Simon

says, well, I had this script and he gave, like, you know, like a...

20 -second pitch of what the script was about.

He's like, what if we take that idea, combine it with this, and we'll call it

The Guest? And I was like, oh, that sounds great. Yeah, can you do that?

Yeah, and I think I had the first draft to you about two months later.

Yeah, it wasn't long. Yeah, and it clicked. It really was one of those

where I threw that script out completely.

I went back to page one, and I said, okay, he's Michael Myers meets The

Terminator. and that's the tone that I want, but I'm gonna try to tell

kind of the same post -Iraq War PTSD story that my original like lofty, you

know, leftist ambition, you know, whatever I was going for with that kind

like post -Iraq War drama original structure.

I was like, you know, there's a version of this.

that actually is quite entertaining.

And that's another point I think we should make, which is the kind of film I

trying originally to write, no one saw these movies.

They weren't successful.

But also, the way that Simon used to write was way darker than the way he

now. It was like, when you read his original scripts, especially in the mid

-2000s, they're really...

very depressing and very violent. I remember at one point Simon and I had

actually, the first film that we had kind of developed before even A Horrible

Way to Die was one about a school shooter kid.

It was like a boy who murdered a baby or something.

It was going to be really dark. It was like a school shooter. I just remember

there was a scene where a guy, he's breaking every bone in somebody's

while somebody else watches and it was really upsetting, like a kid.

Yeah, it all took place in a boy's...

I've never actually read your original draft of The Guest, but I imagine it's

probably really dark, like so dark that you're like, ooh.

Yeah, I mean, and honestly this comes from, I mean, if you watch A Horrible

to Die,

Adam and I definitely at the time didn't think we were making necessarily a very

dark film.

But if you watch it, it's clearly being made by two very depressed, very angry

people who are very unhappy with their lot in life.

But by the time we were doing The Guest, I wasn't as depressed or unhappy

anymore. I mean, it is not true that money solves all your problems, but not

being incredibly poor definitely improves your overall mental stability.

So I wasn't as unhappy as I was when we were making A Horrible Way to Die. And

I'm looking back on The Guest. it felt suddenly very immature versus what Adam

was talking about which is a movie that actually might entertain someone but

again the tension between those two ideas I thought was really interesting

so that's kind of how the idea sort of clicked at least on the at least on the

screenplay front

Getting it made was actually pretty straightforward other than actually

the right cast for it. But we were already kind of trying to develop

with Snoot, Keith and Jez Calder, who had produced Your Next with us.

And so really it was just a matter of once Simon wrote the script, we gave it

him, and we said, this is what we want to do. And like everything, it's also

just contingent on...

you know, uh, on cast and all that kind of stuff.

And, and so that was really the journey of, of that film was, there was a, there

was a good little period where it felt like it was never going to happen

we sent the script to so many different actors that, you know, actors that are

worth money or whatever.

Um, and, uh, and you know, and everybody just turned it down.

And it wasn't until the very end where Dan Stevens was a completely off -the

-wall choice at the time. It makes sense now, but at the time, he had just come

off of Downton Abbey.

I think he had shot that Tombstones movie, whatever it was called, and it

come out yet. Nobody had seen anything.

Nobody had seen Dan Stevens in shape, like action hero Dan Stevens.

That didn't exist at that point.

He was still one of these actors that was just starting to look, and he was

trying to change his image and trying to find new projects.

So I met with him during that period, and he was interested.

I was extremely interested in him. When I met him, I was like, this is the guy.

It was like, he is the character. He's got the looks. He's got the...

His kind of charm, that specific British charm to me, reminded me of the same

way that a southern charm can really work.

It's one of these things that can appeal to older women, younger women. He's got

that kind of vibe in the way that the character's supposed to have.

But at the time, it wasn't like he was...

the type of guy that would get the movie greenlit for that budget and stuff.

And so it felt like it wasn't going to happen. And then at a certain point, to

the credit of Keith Calder, I think he was just like, you know what, screw the

sales reps who are telling us that we need so -and -so actor to be able to do

this. Let's just go do it. Because there was a moment where it was like it was

either going to happen or it wasn't, and it was really up to Keith to kind of

just say, let's just do it.

Yeah, and I think there were two factors there. I think one, your next was very

profitable for Keith, and he was willing to kind of take a gamble.

But also, Adam, I remember you making a great point during that period where it

was like we were being pushed to kind of cast more of an action star in that

role. And I remember you saying, like, the challenge of this movie isn't

believing that this character can beat people up. The challenge of this movie

believing... that anyone would invite him inside.

That made such a huge impact on, I think, Keith and a lot of people because

was absolutely true because it's like, sure, we could put Jason Statham in this

role and he'd be enjoyable in some scenes, but you wouldn't believe for a

that a grieving mother would invite him to stay in a house with a teenage

daughter. But Dan Stevens, as soon as I met Dan, I understood what you were

talking about because I was like, this is him.

This is the person where when he shows up and says, I knew your son, you're

like, oh yeah, come on inside.

Because that was the major hurdle. of the script that casting had to get us

over. I didn't specifically write the script for the guest with an actor in

mind, or at least not that I recall.

It really was, well, you know, actually, I take that back. You always mention

Michael Shannon when you're writing, because of the Bug movie, I think. Yeah,

Michael Shannon.

We really wanted Michael Shannon. Well, and I'd worked with him on Dead Birds,

and we had hit it off, and his career was on the rise. So I really liked the

idea of working with him again, because he's really talented. Or at least you'd

written it originally with him in mind. That was the 2007 draft. That was a much

more bitter, crazed veteran.

Yeah, he wasn't quite as charming. It's kind of hard to picture Michael Shannon

playing. Well, no. That was it. I mean, that was the Terminator Halloween.

Michael Shannon would be fantastic, but it is a very different movie.

You know, it's more take shelter, I guess, than the guest.

And ultimately, you know, that was, I think, part of the fun of the guest was

realized that having...

you know, a protagonist who was, like, handsome and charming and, you know,

seductive really made a lot of the kind of points that I wanted to make, you

know, easier to swallow or utterly obscured, depending on how you take it.

also remember I also had Chris Evans in mind with the later draft, because we

did at that point do the kind of, like, what if it was Captain America? But, I

mean, I knew we weren't going to fucking cast Chris Evans.

I'm sure we tried.

I'm sure we did. I know we did. I know we did. I'm sure we waited. two weeks

him to not read it.

But I mean, there was no way he was going to do it. I mean, it was literally

like, but that was kind of the joke of an evil Captain America.

So that's why I wrote with a bit of Chris Evans in mind, because I felt like

term that he brought to the Captain America in those generic Marvel films

kind of the same thing that I wanted to be evoking for the character, and that

kind of would help guide me to a mainstream play. So then the only

finding someone that charming and then making them do a lot of push -ups.

Yeah, and Dan, was already in pretty good shape actually from his last movie

he didn't really have any muscle mass in the same way that he is in the film so

that was where his focus was he'd already like you know he was really

stuff but when we hired him that was like he jumped right into that and you

actually see

his muscle mass expand during the film.

And what's funny about it, because we kind of cast him at the very last

only had like, I mean, it was only like two months between casting him and

shooting from what I remember. It was very fast.

And so he had to jump right into his training. And, you know, he was also

you know, fight training and all that kind of stuff, gun training and all

um but uh we knew that like one of our like kind of showstopper moments of the

film was going to be dan stevens coming out of the shower um which is i i think

probably my favorite moment of the entire movie it's just a funny fun

we wanted him to just look Absolutely mouth -watering.

And so we actually put that scene at the very end of the shoot.

And what's interesting is, you know, like the very first scene we shot of the

film was the scene where Dan is buying the gun from Ethan Embry.

and they're out sort of in this quarry. And if you look at that scene really

closely, if you look at Dan's face, you can see that he still looks like skinny

Dan. He doesn't look like muscular Dan.

That's because it's so early in the shoot, we hadn't totally nailed that

But by the end of it, he was all ready for his big shirtless

close -up. And I remember that day, it was like storming.

and we had all these, like, lightning delays because that happens when you're

shooting in New Mexico.

And so every time a lightning moves nearby or something, you have to shut

everything down for, like, 45 minutes and something like that. And so there's

all these delays, and there's all this huge buildup. It was like, you know, Dan

sitting around with a robe ready to, you know, do this scene.

And, you know, he shows up, and they have all these little tricks to get, you

know, actors to get their veins pumping. You know, you drink like a...

like a Coke or something, and you do like 100 push -ups, and then, you know,

don't remember what it was, stuff like that.

But, you know, those are the things in a movie you do to, you know, try to get,

you know, those kind of moments. It's not just you show up and, you know, flex

your muscles, you know.

Well, and I think people didn't know at the time that Dan was such a physically

transformative actor, because he just hadn't done it. He'd been on Downton

for years, and, you know, you would think, now that I, know Dan a bit better

we've all become friends it's like I understand how frustrated he must have

playing just one character like because he loves transforming and and so you

know so he lost a ton of weight to play a drug dealer in A Walk Among the

Tombstones because I guess him and the director decided that his character

also be addicted to heroin so he was really skinny and then Clayton Barber a

legendary stuntman legendary stunt coordinator friends with Keith Calder

Calder worked with us on You're Next so he came on to the guest and I just

remember like Everyday on set when Dan had like two hours of downtime Clayton

would just be like Jim

and just like put Dan in a car and drive him to like a gym and just like they'd

work out for two hours and yeah, you could just see Dan like swell up over

course of me. But yeah, I mean, we knew that shower scene.

I mean, that was Robbie Baumgardner who shot the guest.

We were all about like lighting every ridge and every vein on Dan's chest.

I mean, I still to this day get women like on like Twitter and stuff like

thanking me specifically. They're like, I just want to thank you for writing the

scene where Dan Stevens comes out of the shower.

It's always like... It's a pivotal scene in the movie because it's really where

the sense of humor, I think, starts really coalescing in the film. Because I

think what I like about The Guest, I re -watched it a couple weeks ago for the

first time in a while, and it's one of those things where...

the first, like, ten minutes or so of the film, you don't really know, like,

this going to be really serious?

You know, what is this going to be? But by the time you get to that shower

scene, that's where the movie just goes into full gear and it just becomes all

these different little episodes of, you know, David. How is David going to act

at a party? How is he going to, you know, like, just different environments.

And you just get to play with that and just...

let them loot. And so many actors would be worried that they might appear

foolish or they wouldn't want to take it that far.

And Dan just completely got it. He just completely got the joke of every scene.

He knew we were going to make him look great.

He knew he needed to be objectified for that. Yeah, he knew we were going to

fetishize him in precisely the right way. And that we were all about it. And

he had to do was just do... Like 20 more push -ups.

And, yeah, no, we can't wait to work with Dan again on something.

You ready to go?

Sure.

Micah Monroe.

was totally kind of unknown when we first met her. She had a walk -on role

The Bling Ring, and I think she'd done some movie with Zac Efron. She literally

walked on Bling Ring and said, hey, what's up? And then walked out of the

I never actually saw Bling Ring. When you're first looking at actors, you look

at their resume, and you just see these movies, and a lot of times you just go,

oh, she worked with Sofia Coppola. Wow, that's nice.

And then the movie comes out after you've shot your film, and you're like,

She's literally in the film for one line.

But in your imagination, you're like, oh, she's established. She's good to go.

That's a good agent.

Yeah, exactly.

Her audition was fantastic.

Well, that's just it.

Micah came in, and she was like, I'm not sure I want to act anymore.

I'm kind of into kiteboarding now.

And she was just totally disinterested.

Well, that's what the character was. It was like this kind of, I'm really a big

fan of Beetlejuice.

I always loved Winona Ryder's character as Lydia in that film. And, you know, to

have a true kind of goth character, you know, you really, it has to come from a

natural place. You can't force that. Otherwise, I think like, I think when

actors try to force that kind of like true goth heart, it just makes them seem

kind of unlikable or they're kind of moody.

And Micah just has this kind of like, you know, cool.

indifference that she can play and and it's totally real but it doesn't come

like you know just you know unlikable and um and so it but in a lot of ways it

was she was a lot different than i think even the script had because i think or

maybe it was just more my original thought of the character is i kind of

more being like you know less dolled up and a little bit more tomboyish and um

and that kind of thing which micah's not you know her hair is incredible and she

looks like unbelievable um uh and and so the at least in terms of my direction

it because she was just so good in terms of her take and it was even though it

was a little bit different, it was the most exciting one. That's why we kind of

went with her and started tailoring the character a bit more around her own

personality and her strengths and stuff. Yeah, I think that's a great point,

which is Micah does have that ability to be sarcastic without being unlikable.

And I think that is just her personality. But yeah, I also had

written that role kind of picturing Winona Ryder in Beetlejuice.

You know, very goth, like the one kind of...

In those 80s movies, a lot of people have riffed on the popular culture of

80s, both before and since The Guest.

But one ingredient that I always feel is missing that made those movies so

unique and fun and memorable to us is the dynamic that in all those films, the

kids know what's going on and the adults are clueless.

which I think for us as kids was really, you know, a satisfying thing to see

depicted because, of course, it mirrored our reality.

But, like, so, you know, I wanted, like, the kid who knows what's going on but

no one listens to her.

And that is kind of how Micah feels.

So I also, I mean, you meet Micah, she's this, like, tan California blonde,

literally a professional athlete when we met her because she was transitioning

from kiteboarding to acting.

And it was completely wrong for the character.

In terms of when she first walked in, I was like, no way.

These casting directors just not get it.

And then five minutes into Michael's audition, she's kind of making fun of me

because my stomach was growling the whole audition. I don't know if you

that. I was really hungry.

She was breaking character to chastise me about my eating habits.

And it was just like, okay, this is exactly what you need.

Well, you know what's interesting about that?

The runner -up for that part who was really on the fence was actually

Qualley. Do you remember that? I do remember that. Her audition was amazing,

we really liked her. She was much more what was on the page. She was much

younger, too.

I mean, Micah was really young as well, but she was even younger than Micah.

But, you know, obviously I worked with Margaret on Death Note years later, and

I'd actually forgotten about it until I was shooting. She was like, you remember

the audition.

I was like, oh.

Yeah, I mean, I don't think actors don't know what a stressful blur those days.

are for us.

I'm sure it's a stressful experience for them. I'm sure it's much worse. I'm

sure it's worse. But yeah, no, Margaret was great, but she was, that would have

felt like a much more teenage version of the character. Yeah, and then Brendan,

you know, was like, God, I don't know, I mean like. Well, Brendan Meyer was the

first person to audition for the role. He was literally the first person who

came in and auditioned for Luke. And we were like, oh, that was amazing. We're

going to see a bunch of great readings for Luke. And everyone else. I forgot

about that. It turned out it was just him. He was the very first person who

in. He was like, hey, I'm from.

Canada, and I just really like your guys' work, and I want to work with you.

And I remember we were like, well, that guy was perfect. This is wonderful.

Let's see what the day brings.

I don't think we ever saw anybody even remotely.

Respect to everyone else who auditioned for us.

Brendan just killed it for them. He ruined us for them. And we didn't

it, because we were like, oh, that was nice.

And then literally at the end of the day, we were like, bring that guy back.

Brendan's character is...

sort of like the centerpiece of the movie in a lot of ways because and the

of humor kind of revolves around him because you know he's part of like one

the big kickoffs of the film which is you know the scene at the bar where Dan

beats up the bullies and you know it's just you know

it's a tricky character to play because, you know, it's a very funny character,

but you're never trying to play it up for laughs.

And, you know, and Brendan just kind of got that. No, Brendan is the audience

kind of surrogate in a lot of ways, you know, where the way he reacts to David's

behavior, you know, it kind of gives you the moral through line. But then at a

certain point, he makes the choice, which I think the audience is

with, where he's just on David's side.

And also, you know, I mean, the choice of how to play that character's

and stuff. I mean, Brendan made a lot of really subtle choices in the room.

And also something, while we're talking about this, that I just remembered is

both Brendan and Micah were open to doing a chemistry read.

And that was really also when the script kind of, you started to see... I

remember things really well.

As you're saying this, it's all coming back to me. Yeah, that was a long time

ago. But yeah, they did a chemistry read, and I remember that's when I know

least felt like, okay, Brendan is Luke and Micah is Anna, and this is going to

come together.

I need you to hide in here, okay? What? No way.

Anna, look, David was probably just after that army guy. Let's just, let's

talk to him.

He killed Mom and Dad.

Originally, yeah, we thought about doing more like up towards Seattle and that

type of area or Oregon or something, but it was the time of year that we were

shooting ended up being during summertime.

And so for me, I was like, I knew that, you know, obviously this is a Halloween

movie. And if we go anywhere other than the desert, it's going to give away the

fact that we're not actually shooting around Halloween.

And so that was like kind of the initial thought. But then it started being

like, well, you know, all these Halloween, every movie that takes place

Halloween is always in kind of middle America.

It's always in these areas that you kind of expect that look very Halloween

-ish.

And it's probably because of the movie Halloween in a lot of ways. But for us,

it was kind of like, well, it would be interesting to see a desert movie, what

it looks like during that time of year, because it basically looks the same all

year round, but the decorations are there.

And so that was kind of the launching off point for that.

Yeah, I mean, something that I kind of like about...

the guest, if I may say so, is this notion that it contains every single

And I was very happy with New Mexico because it just made it feel more of

stranger comes into town western.

You know, just give those like kind of blank landscapes that surround the

It wasn't what I'd pictured, but I didn't have to dress up. No, it wasn't

really what I pictured initially either, but I was really excited about moving

it out. Because I also wanted to do something in the desert. I mean,

go to just relax, I always go out to Joshua Tree.

And, you know, I'm from Alabama, and so the desert is like the most foreign you

know land that you can visit so that's kind of exciting for me as a filmmaker

be able to kind of just do something different and yeah weirdly the haunted

house sequence at the end we could have not done anywhere else we just got

really lucky that like 10 minutes from where we were shooting there just

happened to be this unbelievable pre -existing

basically just sitting there all year round, haunted house attraction.

And so we wouldn't have been able to afford the whole haunted house ending if

weren't able to go in there and just kind of augment what already existed.

And it's also why the kids in the movie, the high school kids apparently have

this insane budget for their Halloween dance.

People always kind of pick on us about that a little bit, but it's meant to be

so heightened anyway.

that I don't think I ever even gave that a second thought.

Some of the things that made me want to be a filmmaker were action movies, like

the Terminator films growing up, Indiana Jones.

All those things were the things that really influenced me into all the Arnold

Schwarzenegger movies like Commando and all that stuff.

Those were things that were always high on my list. Those were the type of

movies that I wanted to make. It was really exciting to be able to jump into

that with this one.

There are so many influences when it comes to the action in the movie.

What I found interesting recently was, even though this wasn't a movie that I

was directly influenced by, I had never seen it before, but I realized that it

kind of had a big influence on Simon writing the script.

And I wish I'd seen it, but weirdly, the movie has weird overlaps with it. It's

a Michael Biehn film called Time Bomb.

And Time Bomb is just an unbelievable movie. I couldn't believe it. I only saw

it a couple months ago, and it felt like the guest was almost written to be in

the same universe as Time Bomb.

And, you know, long story short, it's just...

you know, the influences of action, you don't know really where they come from

because there's so many different types of action that can happen within, you

know, a couple seconds of each other. You know, one minute, you know, you can

have, you know, one shot can be influenced by, you know, the Matrix and

next one by something John Woo did and, you know, and you're just constantly

like, you know, having fun trying to get all these things in the time frame that

you do. I mean, I wish our action scenes could have been even bigger on this

film, but, you know, you still have a lot of time constraints. And I remember

when we first started shooting the big shootout in this film, at the end when

all the soldiers show up with Lance Reddick.

I was like, I got the flu during that. And it was the worst. It was like out in

the desert sun.

And it was, of course, it was like the first day of the shootout. Like the main

thing I was looking forward to the entire shoot, you know, showing up thick

you know, just having to sit under, you know, like a tent and kind of try to

relay things as much as possible, try to conserve my energy.

It was just really awful.

And so I didn't really quite get to enjoy the action improperly. the way

had imagined myself enjoying initially.

But, you know, that's low -budget filmmaking in general anyways. It's

really that fun.

I remember that day, yeah, I mean, you were sick as hell. It was miserable.

But I do remember at one point the guy who, like, brought the gun came over to,

like, Keith and me, and he was like, I'm running low on bullets.

And it's just one of those moments where you're just like, are you kidding me?

I think it's because the reason he was probably running low on bullets is

because whenever we were doing the machine gun shooting in that film, he

probably budgeting for people realistically shooting the guns, but I

everybody to just unload their clip in one go every single time and edit it

together so it looks like they're just like...

you know, holding down their triggers for like, you know, 20 seconds

unsustained. You know, you do take after take after that, and then it's just,

you know, they unload their clip in like, what, three seconds or something?

Well, so that was it.

Instantly, my brain went into producer mode, and I'm like, well, how many

bullets did you bring?

And he was like, 20 ,000.

And I was like, oh, okay, and how many do we have left? He's like, 2 ,000.

And I was like, okay.

I was like, we'll go tell Adam. And I think we came over to you and we were

like, how many more takes? And you were like, I don't know, like one.

And we were like, okay, fine. And we just didn't even discuss it. Because it

just didn't even need to be brought to your attention. But there was this

of like, are you kidding me? We're going to run out of bullets in our action

scene. And then it was like, oh, because we fired 18 ,000 bullets or something?

I was like, okay, all right, fair enough. I can see why you didn't bring

than that.

You're good at your job.

It all happened very seamlessly, in other words. It wasn't like we sat down

we had a meeting at the beginning and we said, this is going to be our ode to

Halloween, this and that. It just kind of developed over time because even at

that moment, the only movie that really had a really bold electronic score

and soundtrack to it was really kind of Drive. That was the only real reference

or a mainstream movie that was able to do that at that point. point you know

that was really truly mainstream um and so it really still felt like kind of a

risk to do a movie that had um an 80s throwback sort of soundtrack to it and

that wasn't my initial um direction initially i wanted to kind of make it

know i was like oh this is our bigger movie we're gonna have like an

score you know because that's what you can afford now and then you find oh you

know like $5 million actually doesn't afford you shit.

Okay, so we're still making a low -budget movie just with $5 million.

How do we do that?

And weirdly, maybe we'll talk about this more later, but

that's kind of where Steve Moore came in because I'd worked with him, his band

Zombie, on my first film, Homesick.

And Steve is a purist in the sense that he doesn't use samplers. He's not

using modern synths. He's using all original analog synths.

And during this period, I was really into the Halloween 3 score. I was

to it a lot.

And I started talking to him on the phone about it. And he was telling me,

got this sequential circuit, blah, blah, blah.

He had all these original analog synths. And so he could get these sounds that

nobody else had.

And that's what I wanted. I wanted this movie to really feel like it was, or

sound and feel like it was like this kind of lost movie from the 80s.

Halloween just happened to be sort of the centerpiece of that.

Well, you did intentionally put Maj's working with our production designer,

Hammack, to Halloween 3, Season of the Witch. Well, of course. I mean, the

Halloween Season of the Witch stuff is like the obvious one, you know, because

it started with the music, I think, because we did a lot of that score ahead

time, and that's why we ended up putting the...

the figures in the background, and then obviously even the knife that Dan's

holding in the one scene where he's holding his dog tag.

I just think whenever somebody says references, I'm thinking, oh, are we

to imitate exact shots and stuff?

It wasn't totally that.

It was this broader kind of thing. But it was like little seasoning, like

bits here and there, just to kind of let people know the world that we were kind

of operating in.

I'm really bad about this kind of stuff. Like I said, I have a really bad

memory, maybe it's because I've done too many psychedelics or something. But

when I watch these movies, because I don't religiously watch our movies or

anything, I usually will give them a couple years in between each watches.

But it's really funny because every time I watch it, I remember last time I

watched The Guest, it was like, oh, yeah, there's that, there's that.

ever mentioned that one.

There's all these little fun things.

you know, some people pick out something. Yeah, and I mean, you know, a

arc of the movie is an homage to Face Off.

Like, how he gives Brendan Meyer a butterfly knife that is ultimately used

against him. You know, we're doing all kinds of things.

But yeah, I mean, like, at the time, the score that you and Steve kind of put

together for the film and the soundtrack that you put together, like, I don't

think, like, I was aware of the term synthwave.

Because, I mean, I was aware that, like, you know, of, like, Carpenter Brute

and, like,

like artists that were doing that kind of thing, but it didn't feel really in

the zeitgeist until... Yeah, the movie just kind of moved in that direction

fluidly. Again, it wasn't just Steve's score. It was also like when I was

editing the film, I just had all these compiled different types of music that I

kind of had on deck to try and theme.

But I wasn't necessarily thinking of the synthwave stuff.

while I was shooting it, because I was more thinking that there was going to be

a goth rock 80s soundtrack to it. I thought it was going to be more like

Christian Death and Death in June and those types of bands.

But as the movie developed, those were too kind of dark and morose almost for

the film.

And as I was editing, I realized that I needed to push more into a poppy type of

area.

And weirdly, bands like Survive, I...

I'd had on my list of potential songs, but completely had forgotten about them.

I was really into their album right before we shot the movie.

Completely forgot about it.

And then while we were...

In post, I was editing the bar scene in the film, and I was kind of like,

well, this doesn't really look like a bar that would have synthwave music

playing in it. So that wasn't my first choice, but I would try to play kind of

more realistic bar, like country music or something in there. I was just like,

this is just so boring.

And I kind of just came across that one Survive track, and it was kind of like,

oh, well, I'll just play this and see if it's just really cool to watch.

Because sometimes you do that when you're editing and you're bored and

yourself. You just put on cool music and just see what the scene's like.

And it was really just out of that. And suddenly I put it in, and I remember

showing Simon and the producers and everybody the film.

and people were really responding to that type of stuff, and it was like, oh,

you guys don't think this is out of place here? Because I thought surely I

show you guys the movie, and then you would see that bar scene, for instance,

and be like, why is this music playing in this bar?

But it just didn't matter.

I'd never even heard Survive before, even though I tried to stay up on this

stuff, but that was the first time I'd heard that track.

Beyond just the score and some of the soundtrack stuff, Some of the thongs in

the movie are such driving forces to the film, like the haunted when the minutes

drag. For me, whenever I...

I get into trying to figure out how I'm going to direct a new project. The thing

I'm most excited about are the prospects of the music and the songs that are

going to be in the film and how they can tell the story.

For me, I like to just dive in. Even while Simon's writing and just off of

the idea of what the movie is, I'll start sending Simon a lot of songs.

This is sort of the vibe that's...

brewing in my mind so the haunted win the minutes drag thong was sort of the

first one i sent to him and there wasn't really a place for it in the movie

until like kind of we were shooting we kind of

I think we kind of pushed that theme more into what it is now.

Yeah, the scene where he just stares. I'd written the script that he just

down. Whenever he's not doing anything, he just kind of stares off into space.

Yeah, and then I think we figured out a way to join that with Micah making the

mixtape and stuff.

Yeah, you figured out that shot, and then you were just like, let's see how

Dan can go without blinking.

Turns out it's a long time, because Dan, knowing Dan, he probably practiced for

a week. Well, and an interesting little tidbit of the movie, too, is that

Micah's character, Andy, is sort of based on a friend of ours, also named

And Anna actually helped me with a lot of the music in the film.

I would go to her and ask her to send me all these different mixtapes because

she was really into a lot of goth music and a lot of stuff that I wasn't even

really that familiar with.

But she was instrumental in helping me find songs like Clan of Zymoc. Clan of

Zymoc. Yeah, there's a couple Clan of Zymoc songs a day that plays later on in

the film.

But yeah, that really is our kind of creative process. When we're not

working in the same room together, it's more like I kind of like to be left

alone and have my own neurotic process. process, but what Adam can kind of do to

guide me and make sure we're on the same page in ways that are hard to verbally

articulate is send me tracks of music and just be like, are you writing

something that this song would work for? I'm not necessarily thinking of using

this song, but are you writing something that this song would work for? Because

that's what I imagine the tone and the style and the feeling of this is. And

those are the kind of conversations like...

you kind of can't have any other way if you're not kind of on the same page, but

we can do that. So when Adam first sent me that Lovin' Rockets song, I was just

like, well, I guess it is now.

But I listened to that again and again.

Lyrically, that song is just so perfect. It really just kind of personifies what

that movie's really about.

And for me as a director, I kind of consider...

thought about this in recent years that like I've never really wanted to make a

musical but I think like in the same way that you know John Carpenter's always

said all of his movies are westerns I think in a lot of ways all my movies are

musicals you know