Original subtitles

- There's a sequence in Amityville Curse.

I'm sure it's in there, where you see...

the shot is right above the top, the entrance to the church.

The camera is hanging over vertically,

and you see a coffin being drawn out, pulled out.

But I suffer from a slight amount of vertigo,

so I said to my grip at the time,

"Go and attach the camera up there.

You have to put it on a hi-hat

and rig it so it's looking straight down."

He said, "Okay, I'll

tell you when you're ready.

I'll call you when you're ready.

You can come up and see it."

I said, "Oh no.

You look through it, and you tell me.

I'm not going up there.

I'm not sticking my head over."

I said, "You know, I'm... you know, I got...

that vertigo problem.

I won't be able to do it, you know?"

So he said, "Okay."

So he said, because he always called me...

he said, "Oh, captain."

I said, "Yeah, that's right.

Said I'm not going, okay?"

Said "Maybe we should call you Captain Chicken."

So after that, the name stuck.

We were the first or second generation at Con U

of film students.

The film program had just started.

There was one production course,

an editing course, and that was it.

George and I were...

in the first year that the program started.

Tom Berry was in the second year that it started.

Tom Berry... but his future partner Franco Battista,

who was a producer with him for many years,

and they had a couple of companies.

He was in our class.

Well, when George and I went many, many moons ago,

this is like when we're still in film at Concordia.

I guess it would be the mid-'70s.

Our professor at the time

was a guy called Andre Herman,

who was Polish, a great guy, great film teacher,

and he was also a good friend

of the cinematographer Vilmos Zsigmond,

who was holding a sort of a summer

course in Rockport, Maine at the time.

It was a week long.

We went down, and we studied with Vilmos for a week,

and basically we spent most of the week watching all

of his films and studying his films

and recreating some of the scenes from his films,

including several from McCabe and Mrs. Miller,

that were lit...

well, actually there's lanterns on the table,

those lanterns were augmented by little Fresnels

here and there,

and I learned a lot from that

and from Barry Lyndon. The advantage of Barry Lyndon

of course is they developed high speed...

we didn't have high speed lenses.

That was the other issue.

Films like Barry Lyndon and McCabe and Mrs. Miller

were a great influence on my career.

I wanted to emulate those guys.

I saw what they did, and it looked so beautiful

and low key and natural and like, "Yep,

that's what I want to do."

The films, I mean...

that influence me most as thrillers, the ones

I wanted to emulate and wanted to

have my name on at the time where it's things like,

I don't know if you know...

what's it?

Nightmare I think.

It's a 1961 black and white film

from England, I think,

and the director was Freddie Francis

I believe, who was also a DOP,

and it was this incredible black and white...

it was the scariest film I'd ever seen.

And, you know, that to me is like one of the best ever.

You don't hear much of it now, but you should check it out.

It's a fantastic film, but that was the kind of

horror or thriller I liked.

I was never into the monsters type,

I was just into the straightforward

scary sort of supernatural type of thing a little bit.

The early Hammers were fantastic,

but that was a...

they were kind of hokey, many of them,

in many ways, but they were fun and scary,

so yeah.

I immigrated to Canada when I was 19,

so I spent a lot of time watching that stuff in my youth.

We certainly screened it.

We must have certainly screened it. But other than that,

I wouldn't say it was of any great influence.

There's many... seen many horror

thriller films in my life,

and I could think

of others that were more influential than that one, but

at the time, Tom's partner Pierre David,

I don't know if you know him,

but they were... Pierre was... had his company in L.A.,

and they were largely producing films straight-to-video,

and they were going to the production...

the distribution company was Suban or something,

and Pierre would just offer... we did many with them,

with those guys.

I don't know. We did like five a year for several years,

but they would... Pierre would always get this

what he would call this concept film,

and then we'd run with it,

and one of his concepts was,

"Let's make an Amityville sequel."

So away we went.

Not only was there never any talk of shooting on video,

there was never any talk of shooting it in 16.

Everything we shot was in 35 because, at that time,

Pierre David, as I said,

Tom's co-producing friend, who had his company

in L.A. at 700 Sunset Boulevard.

What was it called?

It's Image Corporation and his chief client was...

I think they were called Suban.

Anyway, they insisted

that it be shot in 35 because they maintained at

the time that 16 millimeter was not a professional format.

It was an amateur, independent format,

so he always insisted that we shoot in 35.

So we did... that was the luxury that we had.

We always shot in 35.

We would have the equipment

and because we'd have it...

sometimes we'd only have it for a day

for certain shots because it was scripted in it.

But if we had it for a day, we've done our shot,

now the tendency was always,

"Well, it's still here and it's been paid for.

Let's use it again."

So often we would use it on shots where... crane shots

and moving shots that could have been done just as...

probably as efficiently and easily

with a dolly or some other way,

but no, we used it anyway.

To make it look as realistic

as possible and as passable as possible,

we always try to use some kind of filtration

to soften the edges and also

to keep the light as low as possible, but still

being able to make out detail, you know?

So that was a bit of a challenge.

I remember that we did have to look far

and wide to find a house that looked sort of right,

and we ended up shooting

in a little... it's a little town or village up in...

north of here.

I'm just west of Montreal.

It was up around the Lachute area,

this little town called Saint-Andre East,

and it was a fabulous house.

It looked good,

and we got good exteriors.

The location was fantastic,

but we could not use the interior.

Attached to the house,

there was like a kind of a summer kitchen,

if you wish, and breakfast room, a covered gallery,

and we did shoot a couple of sequences in there.

Other than that, I don't recall because we all...

and the rest, I know we shot a lot

in what we called "the monster house" in Montreal.

This was a big old house on

De Lorimier Avenue that was vacant.

It had sort of large-ish rooms, comparatively speaking,

with high ceilings, which was always handy for us,

and we shot most of the interiors there.

I don't even recall the sequences anymore,

but I know there's a sort of

part of the finale where Dawna Noonan... Noonan?

Dawna Wightman has to go down,

the usual stupid sequence where a woman alone

and vulnerable in an environment

hears some spooky noise downstairs,

and instead of running away, decides to go down

and investigate with a candle or something.

Anyway, she does that, but I remember

that location was particularly small

and cramped and difficult and

it was a horrible place to shoot in,

but that was the job that we had and...

the mission we had to accomplish.

I remember the church sequences,

and that gave us an opportunity

because we actually shot inside a church,

and I don't know how much of it ever made it into the film,

but it was nice to be able to work inside

a nice big environment and easy to light,

low key because you had lots of room.

The locations are too small,

and the equipment that we had to use...

because the film stock was very slow, was very bulky,

and took up a lot of room and created lots of heat.

And it was... always a sweat box.

As I recall...

it wasn't full summer yet,

but it was early summer or late spring,

so it was...

the weather was warming up, but it was

pretty uncomfortable.

We would have to bring in...

the two fifties, the five hundreds,

the big Fresnel lights on occasion.

And the other thing that that always created

because those lights were big, of course, was that

it was always incredibly hot,

which you don't have... you have less of that problem now

because the lighting packages are that much smaller,

and you can shoot practically with available light,

but we... because we were always using big Fresnels,

...and sometimes quartz light,

open face quartz light...

it was often... it was a cooker in there.

My personal philosophy

was that I didn't want

the technique to get into the way of the storytelling.

I thought it's gotta be seamless.

People have gotta be able to

watch it and not say, "Oh, that's a great camera move,

or that's a great shot."

You've gotta be into the narrative.

You've gotta be carried away,

invested in the story and the character.

That to me is the best type of films, when people

don't notice the technique.

Let me be frank,

I probably was not blown away by

the script myself,

and I remember... sometimes the acting was

less than convincing, let's say. But no, I don't...

I know that it did not...

If you look on IMDb, for example,

I'm sure it does not rate very highly.