1 00:00:20,020 --> 00:00:23,719 As America entered the 1980s and '90s, 2 00:00:23,849 --> 00:00:27,505 popular culture was as inundated with violence and death 3 00:00:27,636 --> 00:00:30,378 as it had ever been. 4 00:00:30,508 --> 00:00:34,686 But now, the advent of 24-hour news on cable TV 5 00:00:34,817 --> 00:00:39,691 delivered an endless cycle of these disturbing stories. 6 00:00:39,822 --> 00:00:42,303 They call it the work of the Green River Killer, 7 00:00:42,433 --> 00:00:44,609 probably one man who has murdered 13 young women 8 00:00:44,740 --> 00:00:47,395 near Seattle, case unsolved. 9 00:00:47,525 --> 00:00:50,659 Coverage of violent crime was sensationalized 10 00:00:50,789 --> 00:00:54,532 and seemed to suggest peril around every corner, 11 00:00:54,663 --> 00:00:56,665 while new terrors emerged 12 00:00:56,795 --> 00:00:59,755 as a mysterious disease was introduced, 13 00:00:59,885 --> 00:01:04,934 adding yet another layer of worry and dread. 14 00:01:05,065 --> 00:01:09,330 Manicured suburbs were filled with anxious teenagers 15 00:01:09,460 --> 00:01:11,810 and their stressed-out parents. 16 00:01:11,941 --> 00:01:16,685 There seemed to be no safe place to hide. 17 00:01:16,815 --> 00:01:18,513 Motive-less, random killings, 18 00:01:18,643 --> 00:01:20,776 sometimes thousands of miles apart. 19 00:01:20,906 --> 00:01:22,647 A Justice Department investigator calls it 20 00:01:22,778 --> 00:01:24,475 "terrifying, an epidemic." 21 00:01:24,606 --> 00:01:26,738 They're known as serial killers, 22 00:01:26,869 --> 00:01:28,479 and according to law enforcement officials, 23 00:01:28,610 --> 00:01:30,351 there are at least 35 of them 24 00:01:30,481 --> 00:01:32,744 roaming the country now, stalking victims. 25 00:01:32,875 --> 00:01:34,616 Teenagers processed the onslaught of news 26 00:01:34,746 --> 00:01:36,748 as kids will do-- 27 00:01:36,879 --> 00:01:40,491 feeling vulnerable, alone, and insecure about everything-- 28 00:01:40,622 --> 00:01:42,319 from their place in the world 29 00:01:42,450 --> 00:01:45,235 to their awakening sexual feelings. 30 00:01:46,454 --> 00:01:49,631 Audiences were subjected to a seemingly endless cycle 31 00:01:49,761 --> 00:01:51,894 of exploitative news, 32 00:01:52,024 --> 00:01:54,505 presenting threats from every angle, 33 00:01:54,636 --> 00:01:59,119 suggesting a dangerous world for new modern terrors. 34 00:02:01,121 --> 00:02:05,125 The horror genre became dominated by slasher films 35 00:02:05,255 --> 00:02:07,866 where sexualized teenagers were killed 36 00:02:07,997 --> 00:02:11,348 by merciless, inhuman monsters 37 00:02:11,479 --> 00:02:14,786 punishing them for their transgressions 38 00:02:14,917 --> 00:02:17,702 and while neither they, their helpless parents, 39 00:02:17,833 --> 00:02:20,444 nor the police were able to protect them 40 00:02:20,575 --> 00:02:24,231 from these seemingly unstoppable monsters. 41 00:03:16,805 --> 00:03:18,633 I was a teen in a small town. 42 00:03:18,763 --> 00:03:20,852 I had the typical small-town upbringing, 43 00:03:20,983 --> 00:03:24,465 and so the things that scared me were the idea 44 00:03:24,595 --> 00:03:25,727 that someone could break into your house 45 00:03:25,857 --> 00:03:27,598 and get you when you're asleep. 46 00:03:27,729 --> 00:03:28,860 I was scared of the dark. I was scared-- 47 00:03:28,991 --> 00:03:30,601 I always thought someone was under the bed. 48 00:03:30,732 --> 00:03:32,037 I thought there was someone in the closet. 49 00:03:32,168 --> 00:03:34,475 And I wasn't necessarily scared of monsters 50 00:03:34,605 --> 00:03:36,825 and ghosts and aliens as a child. 51 00:03:36,955 --> 00:03:39,480 I was more scared of the serial killers. 52 00:03:43,614 --> 00:03:45,442 I grew up in the '80s, when not only 53 00:03:45,573 --> 00:03:46,878 were serial killers in our movies, 54 00:03:47,009 --> 00:03:48,663 like in Halloween and Friday the 13th, 55 00:03:48,793 --> 00:03:50,491 but they were also in our world. 56 00:03:56,018 --> 00:03:57,802 You know, with Bundy and Gacy and Dahmer 57 00:03:57,933 --> 00:03:59,674 and all of those, you know-- 58 00:03:59,804 --> 00:04:01,545 serial killers became household names back then. 59 00:04:01,676 --> 00:04:03,112 The assailant entered a house in a quiet, 60 00:04:03,243 --> 00:04:05,723 middle-class neighborhood in the predawn hours on Sunday 61 00:04:05,854 --> 00:04:07,247 through an unlocked window 62 00:04:07,377 --> 00:04:09,118 and attacked the couple while they slept. 63 00:04:09,249 --> 00:04:11,642 It just terrifying to me 'cause I lived in a small town 64 00:04:11,773 --> 00:04:13,209 where we didn't lock our doors. 65 00:04:13,340 --> 00:04:14,689 And that scared me 'cause it was real. 66 00:04:14,819 --> 00:04:16,212 Stand by. Ready? Three, take three. My cue. 67 00:04:16,343 --> 00:04:17,866 Ready, camera three. One center up. 68 00:04:17,996 --> 00:04:19,520 Good evening. I'm David Walker. 69 00:04:19,650 --> 00:04:21,913 And I'm Lois Hart. Now here's the news. 70 00:04:22,044 --> 00:04:24,916 CNN started broadcasting in the 1980s, 71 00:04:25,047 --> 00:04:27,615 and the '80s were packed with sensational stories 72 00:04:27,745 --> 00:04:29,356 about serial killers. 73 00:04:33,925 --> 00:04:36,798 Like the trials of Ted Bundy, John Wayne Gacy, 74 00:04:36,928 --> 00:04:38,713 the Hillside Stranglers, 75 00:04:38,843 --> 00:04:40,932 and the capture of Henry Lee Lucas. 76 00:04:41,063 --> 00:04:42,760 They started getting great ratings 77 00:04:42,891 --> 00:04:44,588 showing all of the murders 78 00:04:44,719 --> 00:04:46,416 that were happening in your neighborhood. 79 00:04:51,639 --> 00:04:53,162 In New London, Connecticut, 80 00:04:53,293 --> 00:04:56,774 police say a man apparently upset over a family problem 81 00:04:56,905 --> 00:04:59,081 went on a shooting spree aboard an Amtrak train 82 00:04:59,211 --> 00:05:01,692 en route from Washington to Boston. 83 00:05:01,823 --> 00:05:04,739 The brand-new network that was suddenly in everyone's homes 84 00:05:04,869 --> 00:05:07,089 telling you what was happening, and what they were showing you 85 00:05:07,219 --> 00:05:10,571 is that the world you live in is unsafe 86 00:05:10,701 --> 00:05:12,486 because killers are out there. 87 00:05:12,616 --> 00:05:13,443 They're in your neighborhood. 88 00:05:16,838 --> 00:05:19,188 The serial killer next door 89 00:05:19,319 --> 00:05:22,670 had become all too real. 90 00:05:22,800 --> 00:05:26,804 In one gruesome case alone, 26 victims' bodies 91 00:05:26,935 --> 00:05:30,982 were carried out of John Wayne Gacy's home in 1978. 92 00:05:31,113 --> 00:05:34,116 In all, Gacy had sexually assaulted 93 00:05:34,246 --> 00:05:36,988 and murdered 33 young men and boys 94 00:05:37,119 --> 00:05:39,991 over a six-year period. 95 00:05:40,122 --> 00:05:44,953 And as always, the horror genre reflected real-life fears 96 00:05:45,083 --> 00:05:48,043 as filmmakers incorporated this national obsession 97 00:05:48,173 --> 00:05:50,045 with psychotic killers 98 00:05:50,175 --> 00:05:53,222 by perfecting the modern slasher movie-- 99 00:05:53,353 --> 00:05:56,965 90 minutes of teenagers being chased by a relentless, 100 00:05:57,095 --> 00:06:00,621 enraged, usually masked killer. 101 00:06:00,751 --> 00:06:02,797 The stalker classic Halloween 102 00:06:02,927 --> 00:06:06,931 and films like Friday The 13th and Nightmare on Elm Street 103 00:06:07,062 --> 00:06:09,543 sent teens flocking to the movies 104 00:06:09,673 --> 00:06:11,153 and launched horror franchises 105 00:06:11,283 --> 00:06:15,026 that dominated the multiplexes throughout the '80s. 106 00:06:15,157 --> 00:06:16,898 And that's kind of what '80s horror movies were all about. 107 00:06:22,033 --> 00:06:25,994 They personified evil with this omniscient force 108 00:06:26,124 --> 00:06:28,388 that could not be fucking stopped. 109 00:06:28,518 --> 00:06:29,998 You can throw bullets at these fuckers, man, 110 00:06:30,128 --> 00:06:31,739 throw them off roofs and shit. 111 00:06:31,869 --> 00:06:32,914 Like, they can't be stopped. 112 00:06:33,044 --> 00:06:35,090 Like death, they're relentless. 113 00:06:35,220 --> 00:06:36,874 So, you know, it was a wonderful metaphor 114 00:06:37,005 --> 00:06:38,223 for a young Catholic kid 115 00:06:38,354 --> 00:06:40,008 who was already fucking obsessed with death 116 00:06:40,138 --> 00:06:43,707 that like, you know, even-- I didn't need CliffsNotes 117 00:06:43,838 --> 00:06:47,668 to understand, like, oh, we all die eventually. 118 00:06:47,798 --> 00:06:49,626 With the advent of cable television 119 00:06:49,757 --> 00:06:51,889 and the emergence of video stores, 120 00:06:52,020 --> 00:06:53,717 viewers could channel surf 121 00:06:53,848 --> 00:06:56,851 between real monsters and imaginary killers. 122 00:07:01,856 --> 00:07:03,074 The first horror movie I ever saw 123 00:07:03,205 --> 00:07:05,860 was Friday the 13th. 124 00:07:05,990 --> 00:07:07,731 And for whatever reason, I was left alone 125 00:07:07,862 --> 00:07:09,777 in front of the television when I was too young. 126 00:07:09,907 --> 00:07:11,082 I was eight or nine years old. 127 00:07:11,213 --> 00:07:12,997 And it was definitely one of the worst, 128 00:07:13,128 --> 00:07:14,912 scariest nights of my life, and I didn't see a horror movie 129 00:07:15,043 --> 00:07:16,653 for about two or three years after that. 130 00:07:16,784 --> 00:07:17,915 But it had a great effect on me 131 00:07:18,046 --> 00:07:20,788 and clearly informed me in later years. 132 00:07:20,918 --> 00:07:22,659 I had been working on a couple children's shows, 133 00:07:22,790 --> 00:07:24,748 and they got put on hold. 134 00:07:29,187 --> 00:07:32,103 I came up with the title Friday the 13th, 135 00:07:32,234 --> 00:07:34,889 and I took out a big ad in Variety saying, 136 00:07:35,019 --> 00:07:37,369 "The most terrifying film ever made. 137 00:07:37,500 --> 00:07:40,764 Friday the 13th, coming soon." 138 00:07:40,895 --> 00:07:42,766 And I didn't have anything. 139 00:07:42,897 --> 00:07:45,247 I got a bunch of distributors and countries 140 00:07:45,377 --> 00:07:47,031 where they wanted a piece of something 141 00:07:47,162 --> 00:07:48,946 called Friday the 13th. 142 00:07:58,086 --> 00:07:59,043 When we first came up with this notion 143 00:07:59,174 --> 00:08:01,785 of Friday the 13th, 144 00:08:01,916 --> 00:08:04,788 it was like all these strange little deaths. 145 00:08:04,919 --> 00:08:07,312 Who was gonna go next, and who's gonna survive? 146 00:08:07,443 --> 00:08:09,880 So when we were trying to figure out an ending, 147 00:08:10,011 --> 00:08:13,231 and there were-- [chuckles]-- this took some doing. 148 00:08:13,362 --> 00:08:17,061 I decided that the killer was gonna be Jason's mother. 149 00:08:17,192 --> 00:08:19,803 Betsy Palmer has a public image 150 00:08:19,934 --> 00:08:23,677 of being the nicest person in the world. 151 00:08:23,807 --> 00:08:25,200 So I thought that we could get 152 00:08:25,330 --> 00:08:28,072 at least a few moments of people relaxing. 153 00:08:28,203 --> 00:08:31,249 "Oh, Betsy Palmer's here. We know she's nice." 154 00:08:31,380 --> 00:08:33,817 Did you know that a young boy drowned 155 00:08:33,948 --> 00:08:36,167 the year before those two others were killed? 156 00:08:36,298 --> 00:08:39,214 The counselors weren't paying any attention. 157 00:08:39,344 --> 00:08:41,912 They were making love while that young boy drowned. 158 00:08:44,132 --> 00:08:47,222 His name was Jason. 159 00:08:47,352 --> 00:08:49,180 You wouldn't question that a mother would, 160 00:08:49,311 --> 00:08:51,922 you know, seek revenge for the death of her kid. 161 00:08:52,053 --> 00:08:53,968 So the first movie is definitely horrific, 162 00:08:54,098 --> 00:08:56,100 but, like, it also had this fucking great twist 163 00:08:56,231 --> 00:08:58,712 where it's like, oh, this lady is the killer? 164 00:08:58,842 --> 00:09:00,235 That's kind of crazy. 165 00:09:00,365 --> 00:09:04,935 And then the very next movie, suddenly a star is born. 166 00:09:05,066 --> 00:09:07,068 But they found a way to make Friday the 13th continue 167 00:09:07,198 --> 00:09:10,158 by being like, "Oh, never mind the killer mom. 168 00:09:10,288 --> 00:09:12,769 The boy-- he lived. 169 00:09:12,900 --> 00:09:15,032 He's the fucking bad guy from now on. 170 00:09:15,163 --> 00:09:16,947 And we're gonna put a fucking bag on his head!" 171 00:09:17,078 --> 00:09:18,862 Not real great marketing. 172 00:09:18,993 --> 00:09:19,994 But then they got to the third movie, 173 00:09:20,124 --> 00:09:21,299 put a fucking hockey mask on him, 174 00:09:21,430 --> 00:09:23,127 and that changed everything. 175 00:09:23,258 --> 00:09:24,825 Aaah! 176 00:09:24,955 --> 00:09:26,348 Oh! 177 00:09:29,612 --> 00:09:32,180 You see that on a little icon, you're like, "That's a horror." 178 00:09:33,442 --> 00:09:37,054 My first horror movie, like, besides Gremlins, 179 00:09:37,185 --> 00:09:40,580 was Friday the 13th Part III in 3D. 180 00:09:45,019 --> 00:09:47,195 And it was coming out in the movie theaters, 181 00:09:47,325 --> 00:09:49,893 and I wanted to see it more than anything. 182 00:09:50,024 --> 00:09:54,028 Friday the 13th Part 3 in 3D. 183 00:09:54,158 --> 00:09:57,901 - Aah! - A new dimension in terror. 184 00:09:58,032 --> 00:09:59,947 I begged my parents. I begged and begged and begged. 185 00:10:00,077 --> 00:10:01,862 And they were like, "No, no, no. 186 00:10:01,992 --> 00:10:04,038 Under no circumstances can you see that movie. 187 00:10:04,168 --> 00:10:05,996 You're too young. You'll have nightmares forever." 188 00:10:06,127 --> 00:10:10,348 Because these are Jason's woods. 189 00:10:10,479 --> 00:10:13,917 And nobody leaves them alive. 190 00:10:14,831 --> 00:10:18,269 So they were going away on a ski weekend with their friends. 191 00:10:18,400 --> 00:10:20,271 And they had my babysitter, Jill, 192 00:10:20,402 --> 00:10:22,447 who lived across the street, stay with me. 193 00:10:22,578 --> 00:10:25,320 And I remember very vividly them, like, giving Jill 194 00:10:25,450 --> 00:10:27,322 the rundown of, like, "Here are the rules. 195 00:10:27,452 --> 00:10:29,890 Here's the food and some extra money" and yada, yada, yada. 196 00:10:30,020 --> 00:10:32,370 And they were like, "One last thing. 197 00:10:32,501 --> 00:10:34,285 She's gonna try to get you to take her 198 00:10:34,416 --> 00:10:35,939 to see Friday the 13th." 199 00:10:36,070 --> 00:10:38,159 In 3D. 200 00:10:38,289 --> 00:10:41,989 "Under no circumstances-- and I mean no circumstances-- 201 00:10:42,119 --> 00:10:44,078 is she allowed to see that movie." 202 00:10:44,208 --> 00:10:46,254 And Jill's like, "Okay, like, how hard is it 203 00:10:46,384 --> 00:10:48,169 to not take a kid to a movie?" 204 00:10:48,299 --> 00:10:51,128 Like, pretty easy. We have a super-fun night, 205 00:10:51,259 --> 00:10:53,217 watch TV, have popcorn, listen to Madonna. 206 00:10:53,348 --> 00:10:57,047 We go upstairs and go to bed, and I hear talking downstairs. 207 00:10:58,440 --> 00:11:04,098 And I snuck downstairs, and I see Jill on the couch 208 00:11:04,228 --> 00:11:08,406 wearing my mom's nightgown with her boyfriend 209 00:11:08,537 --> 00:11:12,193 underneath the quilt that my grandmother made! 210 00:11:12,323 --> 00:11:17,067 And I was like, "Oh, we're gonna go see that movie." 211 00:11:17,198 --> 00:11:19,374 And the next day I said to Jill, 212 00:11:19,504 --> 00:11:22,203 "I'm gonna tell your parents and my parents 213 00:11:22,333 --> 00:11:25,032 if you don't take me to see Friday the 13th in 3D 214 00:11:25,162 --> 00:11:26,207 in the movie theater." 215 00:11:26,337 --> 00:11:28,296 And she was like... 216 00:11:28,426 --> 00:11:31,908 So, sure enough, Saturday matinee. 217 00:11:37,479 --> 00:11:40,482 It was the scariest-- Am I allowed to swear? 218 00:11:42,484 --> 00:11:45,269 The scariest fucking thing to this day 219 00:11:45,400 --> 00:11:47,968 I have ever, ever seen in my life. 220 00:11:50,405 --> 00:11:52,886 I won't go see 3-D movies at all now, 221 00:11:53,016 --> 00:11:54,061 at all, because of it. 222 00:11:54,191 --> 00:11:55,323 It was so fucking scary. 223 00:11:55,453 --> 00:11:57,934 My parents were 110% right. 224 00:11:58,065 --> 00:12:00,197 I should never have seen that movie. 225 00:12:00,328 --> 00:12:02,156 I mean, still to this day, I have nightmares. 226 00:12:02,286 --> 00:12:04,854 But I never told my parents why I was having nightmares. 227 00:12:08,075 --> 00:12:10,991 Fucking hockey mask, man. 228 00:12:13,341 --> 00:12:16,213 I swear I felt like I was born to play that character. 229 00:12:16,344 --> 00:12:18,215 It felt so natural, even from the beginning. 230 00:12:23,264 --> 00:12:25,962 Villains are so scary behind a mask. 231 00:12:26,093 --> 00:12:28,399 It has to be the unknown. 232 00:12:28,530 --> 00:12:30,314 I mean, that has to be a factor to it, 233 00:12:30,445 --> 00:12:33,013 that you're looking at someone, you don't really know 234 00:12:33,143 --> 00:12:34,144 what they really look like. 235 00:12:36,494 --> 00:12:38,932 And not that you'd necessarily want to, 236 00:12:39,062 --> 00:12:41,369 but just that mystery of, 237 00:12:41,499 --> 00:12:44,328 "Who could possibly be behind that mask?" 238 00:12:44,459 --> 00:12:48,463 and the expressionless-ness of it, 239 00:12:48,593 --> 00:12:51,422 whether it's Michael Myers or Jason, 240 00:12:51,553 --> 00:12:53,207 it never changes. 241 00:12:53,337 --> 00:12:59,430 So it's just a scary, unknown entity, 242 00:12:59,561 --> 00:13:02,216 I think, is what makes it so terrifying. 243 00:13:02,346 --> 00:13:04,479 The truth is, Friday the 13th started out 244 00:13:04,609 --> 00:13:07,612 with a reality-based killer, more or less. 245 00:13:07,743 --> 00:13:11,312 You know, it has turned into this sort of iconic story 246 00:13:11,442 --> 00:13:16,839 about this abused kid, Jason. 247 00:13:16,970 --> 00:13:19,494 And I think that inside of that story is something 248 00:13:19,624 --> 00:13:24,194 that's so irresistible to a lot of people. 249 00:13:24,325 --> 00:13:27,154 It's like Revenge of the Nerds on steroids, you know, 250 00:13:27,284 --> 00:13:29,243 and you get to kick ass 251 00:13:29,373 --> 00:13:31,593 all these people that are bugging you. 252 00:13:31,723 --> 00:13:34,161 And I think it is very dependable. 253 00:13:34,291 --> 00:13:36,119 If you're gonna go see a Friday the 13th movie, 254 00:13:36,250 --> 00:13:38,469 you know at this point what you're gonna get. 255 00:13:38,600 --> 00:13:41,298 And we always try to deliver on that, and then a little more. 256 00:13:41,429 --> 00:13:45,041 Probably the biggest thing about Jason 257 00:13:45,172 --> 00:13:48,131 that the audience fears 258 00:13:48,262 --> 00:13:52,744 is the unstoppable nature of the character. 259 00:13:52,875 --> 00:13:57,401 No matter what you do to stop that guy from coming after you, 260 00:13:57,532 --> 00:13:58,925 it doesn't work. 261 00:14:00,187 --> 00:14:02,015 You light the guy on fire, 262 00:14:02,145 --> 00:14:03,930 you blow him up, 263 00:14:04,060 --> 00:14:06,236 you stab him, 264 00:14:06,367 --> 00:14:09,196 you hack him with an ax... 265 00:14:10,371 --> 00:14:11,459 ...he still keeps coming. 266 00:14:14,766 --> 00:14:16,116 After Friday the 13th, 267 00:14:16,246 --> 00:14:18,248 it looked like these little movies, 268 00:14:18,379 --> 00:14:20,555 you know, relatively low-budget movies 269 00:14:20,685 --> 00:14:24,037 that featured a lot of blood and special effects 270 00:14:24,167 --> 00:14:25,690 were going to be successful. 271 00:14:25,821 --> 00:14:29,303 The success of this new wave of genre films 272 00:14:29,433 --> 00:14:32,349 attracted exciting young filmmakers 273 00:14:32,480 --> 00:14:36,310 and inspired them to make horror films infused with fresh ideas, 274 00:14:36,440 --> 00:14:40,096 creative storytelling, innovative cinematography 275 00:14:40,227 --> 00:14:43,360 and spit-and-glue special effects 276 00:14:43,491 --> 00:14:46,015 to get the biggest bang for their buck. 277 00:14:51,891 --> 00:14:55,503 The only reason we ever got into horror in the first place 278 00:14:55,633 --> 00:14:57,418 for my first film, Evil Dead-- 279 00:14:57,548 --> 00:15:00,203 we were terrified of losing the investors' money. 280 00:15:05,600 --> 00:15:08,559 And we knew that horror films was a staple that was out there. 281 00:15:08,690 --> 00:15:10,213 You could get them into drive-ins. 282 00:15:10,344 --> 00:15:12,172 You didn't have to get in fancy theaters. 283 00:15:12,302 --> 00:15:14,304 You could use no-name actors 284 00:15:14,435 --> 00:15:17,090 wearing regular clothes, driving regular cars. 285 00:15:17,220 --> 00:15:19,092 Nothing had to be that fancy. 286 00:15:22,312 --> 00:15:24,706 Why have you disturbed our sleep, 287 00:15:24,836 --> 00:15:28,492 awakened us from our ancient slumber? 288 00:15:28,623 --> 00:15:33,280 Sam I met in eighth grade. 289 00:15:33,410 --> 00:15:35,499 I was walking down the hallway, West Maple Junior High School. 290 00:15:35,630 --> 00:15:37,632 He's sitting in the middle of the hallway 291 00:15:37,762 --> 00:15:40,461 dressed like Sherlock Holmes, playing with dolls. 292 00:15:40,591 --> 00:15:43,072 I was like, "Oh, man. 293 00:15:43,203 --> 00:15:44,595 I'm going around that guy." 294 00:15:44,726 --> 00:15:46,467 I mean, he really left an indelible mark. 295 00:15:46,597 --> 00:15:47,729 I'm like, "People don't do that. 296 00:15:47,859 --> 00:15:49,687 They don't dress like Sherlock Holmes." 297 00:15:49,818 --> 00:15:51,863 And he claimed later he was making a movie. 298 00:15:51,994 --> 00:15:53,430 I'm like, "I didn't see a camera. 299 00:15:53,561 --> 00:15:55,258 I didn't see it anywhere. 300 00:15:55,389 --> 00:15:56,956 I think you were just being a little whack job." 301 00:15:58,609 --> 00:16:02,744 Oh, God. Look at this. 302 00:16:02,874 --> 00:16:07,618 Sam Raimi took a class and read about the Necronomicon. 303 00:16:07,749 --> 00:16:10,578 It was like the Egyptian Book of the Dead. 304 00:16:10,708 --> 00:16:13,276 And he thought, "Hey, that's cool. 305 00:16:13,407 --> 00:16:16,410 Like, that's just this weird book that has conjurings, 306 00:16:16,540 --> 00:16:19,282 and once you conjure them, like, what happens? 307 00:16:19,413 --> 00:16:20,631 I don't know." 308 00:16:20,762 --> 00:16:22,416 So that was really intriguing to him. 309 00:16:22,546 --> 00:16:24,722 And so I think he brought that up 310 00:16:24,853 --> 00:16:27,203 when we decided to make a horror movie. 311 00:16:28,204 --> 00:16:30,250 This guy was a real turd, you know. 312 00:16:30,380 --> 00:16:32,339 Everybody hated him. Everybody. 313 00:16:32,469 --> 00:16:33,470 Like you, kinda. 314 00:16:33,601 --> 00:16:35,472 Released in 1981, 315 00:16:35,603 --> 00:16:38,475 The Evil Dead is the story of a group of friends 316 00:16:38,606 --> 00:16:42,653 that unleash an ancient curse conjured from a Sumerian text. 317 00:16:42,784 --> 00:16:44,655 The film did what horror does best-- 318 00:16:44,786 --> 00:16:48,268 created a meta world with layers of subtext. 319 00:16:48,398 --> 00:16:50,400 You never see the villain. 320 00:16:50,531 --> 00:16:53,577 The evil spirit possesses these kids one by one. 321 00:16:53,708 --> 00:16:55,405 As one critic put it, 322 00:16:55,536 --> 00:16:58,278 "The monster is the camera itself 323 00:16:58,408 --> 00:17:00,541 and whoever is behind it." 324 00:17:00,671 --> 00:17:03,283 In other words, the viewer is part of the scene, 325 00:17:03,413 --> 00:17:05,459 whether they want to be or not. 326 00:17:05,589 --> 00:17:07,852 You hear an incantation. Something comes up. 327 00:17:07,983 --> 00:17:11,465 It possesses you, you know, and has malevolent intent. 328 00:17:11,595 --> 00:17:14,337 So you open-- you opened the wrong book, man. 329 00:17:14,468 --> 00:17:17,166 And so I think Sam kind of ran with it from there. 330 00:17:17,297 --> 00:17:18,341 And Evil Dead came along. 331 00:17:29,004 --> 00:17:31,659 Evil Dead is the most simplistic plot ever, 332 00:17:31,789 --> 00:17:34,662 and it's one that we see to come over and over-- 333 00:17:34,792 --> 00:17:37,491 group of kids go to a cabin, 334 00:17:37,621 --> 00:17:39,406 they find some fucked-up shit there, 335 00:17:39,536 --> 00:17:40,885 and then the movie just keeps going. 336 00:17:41,016 --> 00:17:43,497 But what Evil Dead did is at a time period 337 00:17:43,627 --> 00:17:45,455 where if you were going to a cabin, 338 00:17:45,586 --> 00:17:48,632 you were going to encounter a maniacal redneck killer. 339 00:17:48,763 --> 00:17:51,461 Instead, the entire house is demonic. 340 00:17:51,592 --> 00:17:53,768 Everything is cursed around it. 341 00:17:53,898 --> 00:17:57,554 And just by being there, you're getting the curse, too. 342 00:17:57,685 --> 00:17:59,861 Our special effects were very crude. 343 00:17:59,991 --> 00:18:01,428 Tom Sullivan's like, "I know how to make these 344 00:18:01,558 --> 00:18:02,864 special, cool molds. 345 00:18:02,994 --> 00:18:04,605 We'll make a mold of the actor's face, 346 00:18:04,735 --> 00:18:05,910 and then you can sculpt it 347 00:18:06,041 --> 00:18:08,652 and then put an appliance on their face." 348 00:18:08,783 --> 00:18:11,873 Right? So we'll use plaster of Paris. 349 00:18:12,003 --> 00:18:14,267 Well, anyone who's used plaster of Paris knows 350 00:18:14,397 --> 00:18:17,618 it heats up and as it dries. 351 00:18:17,748 --> 00:18:20,273 Well, okay, so we put a light coating of Vaseline 352 00:18:20,403 --> 00:18:21,709 on Betsy Baker's face. 353 00:18:21,839 --> 00:18:23,841 She was the first guinea pig. 354 00:18:23,972 --> 00:18:26,801 This thing starts to heat up. She's like, "How much longer?" 355 00:18:26,931 --> 00:18:29,499 So finally like five minutes later, we go, 356 00:18:29,630 --> 00:18:30,892 "Okay, Betsy, no problem, we're gonna get you out of that." 357 00:18:31,022 --> 00:18:32,720 So all you have to do is lean forward, right? 358 00:18:32,850 --> 00:18:36,332 'Cause the weight of it, of the plaster of Paris, 359 00:18:36,463 --> 00:18:37,986 will pull it off your face. 360 00:18:38,117 --> 00:18:40,684 So it did-- went right off her face, right into her hand. 361 00:18:40,815 --> 00:18:43,426 She looks into the mask, and all of her eyelashes 362 00:18:43,557 --> 00:18:45,950 were in the mold. 363 00:18:46,081 --> 00:18:48,953 It pulled all of her eyelashes off of her face. 364 00:18:49,084 --> 00:18:52,609 And she said, in the most kind of remarkable way-- 365 00:18:52,740 --> 00:18:55,525 she was like more fascinated-- she goes, 366 00:18:55,656 --> 00:18:57,832 "Those are all my eyelashes." 367 00:18:57,962 --> 00:18:59,834 We're like, "Yeah, Betsy. Sorry." 368 00:18:59,964 --> 00:19:01,140 And that was just the beginning. 369 00:19:10,714 --> 00:19:12,586 And then when it finally did come out, 370 00:19:12,716 --> 00:19:15,371 we started to get some pretty bad reviews. 371 00:19:15,502 --> 00:19:16,807 A paper in Atlanta called it 372 00:19:16,938 --> 00:19:19,941 Evil Dead: The Sickest of the Sick. 373 00:19:20,071 --> 00:19:23,597 Sam Raimi took every bad idea he's ever had..." 374 00:19:23,727 --> 00:19:25,860 Ever had. He only made one movie. 375 00:19:25,990 --> 00:19:29,211 "...and put it into a low-budget blender." 376 00:19:29,342 --> 00:19:32,432 I'm like, "What a dick. What a dickish thing to say." 377 00:19:32,562 --> 00:19:34,521 But this new kind of filmmaking, 378 00:19:34,651 --> 00:19:36,523 one that threw in everything 379 00:19:36,653 --> 00:19:38,873 audiences come to love about horror films-- 380 00:19:39,003 --> 00:19:41,702 the campy special effects, ham-fisted dialogue, 381 00:19:41,832 --> 00:19:43,834 and handsome action hero-- 382 00:19:43,965 --> 00:19:46,489 impressed the one guy that mattered. 383 00:19:46,620 --> 00:19:48,622 Enter Stephen King. 384 00:19:48,752 --> 00:19:50,624 He sees it at the Cannes Film Festival. 385 00:19:50,754 --> 00:19:52,626 It's a horror movie. Let's go see it. 386 00:19:52,756 --> 00:19:56,630 And he writes an article in Twilight Zone Magazine 387 00:19:56,760 --> 00:19:58,849 and calls it "the most ferociously original 388 00:19:58,980 --> 00:20:00,808 horror film of the year." 389 00:20:00,938 --> 00:20:03,376 We spit our coffee. We're like, "Wait a second. 390 00:20:03,506 --> 00:20:04,812 Stephen King said that?" 391 00:20:04,942 --> 00:20:06,857 And I don't even know how we tracked him down. 392 00:20:06,988 --> 00:20:10,034 But, "Sir, could we please-- please, can we use that quote?" 393 00:20:10,165 --> 00:20:11,819 He goes, "Yeah." 394 00:20:11,949 --> 00:20:13,690 We were like, "Oh, my God." 395 00:20:13,821 --> 00:20:16,215 So that's on the poster to this day. 396 00:20:16,345 --> 00:20:19,218 Stephen King-- I mean, what an endorsement. 397 00:20:19,348 --> 00:20:21,394 Evil Dead was banned in most countries 398 00:20:21,524 --> 00:20:22,699 and slashed by censors. 399 00:20:22,830 --> 00:20:25,006 It was also on the video nasties list. 400 00:20:25,136 --> 00:20:28,357 Sam Raimi made Evil Dead as this homespun, 401 00:20:28,488 --> 00:20:30,751 guttural exploitation film, 402 00:20:30,881 --> 00:20:32,579 and it's really freaking scary. 403 00:20:32,709 --> 00:20:35,059 We forget about how scary the original Evil Dead is 404 00:20:35,190 --> 00:20:37,453 in light of Evil Dead II and Army of Darkness 405 00:20:37,584 --> 00:20:38,715 and everything to come. 406 00:20:38,846 --> 00:20:41,544 But that first film was horrifying. 407 00:20:41,675 --> 00:20:43,067 It's violent. 408 00:20:43,198 --> 00:20:46,070 The decision to make a completely carnage-filled 409 00:20:46,201 --> 00:20:50,553 horror movie was also a business decision of like, 410 00:20:50,684 --> 00:20:51,815 "We don't want to get lost in the shuffle. 411 00:20:51,946 --> 00:20:53,991 We have to-- This has to be, like, 412 00:20:54,122 --> 00:20:55,689 something people remember when they watch it." 413 00:20:55,819 --> 00:20:58,779 Aaah! 414 00:21:06,265 --> 00:21:07,831 The Evil Dead was a hit. 415 00:21:07,962 --> 00:21:09,920 Audiences ate it up, 416 00:21:10,051 --> 00:21:13,794 and Sam Raimi had a franchise on his hands. 417 00:21:13,924 --> 00:21:15,839 My theory is that horror works. 418 00:21:15,970 --> 00:21:18,625 It's one of the few genres that can get 419 00:21:18,755 --> 00:21:21,889 an audience to react viscerally. 420 00:21:22,019 --> 00:21:24,108 You know, after we put the first Evil Dead out, 421 00:21:24,239 --> 00:21:28,287 we would sit in movie theaters to watch it play with audiences. 422 00:21:28,417 --> 00:21:29,897 And we didn't care about the movie after a while. 423 00:21:30,027 --> 00:21:32,073 It was, we just watched the audience. 424 00:21:32,203 --> 00:21:35,685 You'd see a couple, they got a jacket over their head, 425 00:21:35,816 --> 00:21:36,860 and they're screening the movie 426 00:21:36,991 --> 00:21:38,949 through their sleeve of the jacket, 427 00:21:39,080 --> 00:21:41,952 'cause they only want to see parts of the screen. 428 00:21:42,083 --> 00:21:44,912 They love that feeling that they got of like, 429 00:21:45,042 --> 00:21:47,741 "I'm dead. I'm gonna be dead." 430 00:21:47,871 --> 00:21:49,917 And then after the movie, "I'm not dead." 431 00:21:50,047 --> 00:21:53,747 It's probably very cathartic, why horror works. 432 00:22:01,276 --> 00:22:03,713 As if teenagers didn't already have enough to fear 433 00:22:03,844 --> 00:22:05,628 in their waking hours, 434 00:22:05,759 --> 00:22:07,195 Wes Craven came up with something 435 00:22:07,326 --> 00:22:11,112 even more terrifying to torture their subconscious. 436 00:22:11,242 --> 00:22:11,939 We think of Nightmare on Elm Street 437 00:22:12,069 --> 00:22:13,854 as being mainstream now, 438 00:22:13,984 --> 00:22:16,465 but it was a bit alternative back in the day. 439 00:22:20,948 --> 00:22:24,604 I think the original fans were dorm rats 440 00:22:24,734 --> 00:22:26,736 passing around the same old video 441 00:22:26,867 --> 00:22:28,303 and heavy-metal kids 442 00:22:28,434 --> 00:22:29,826 and then their brothers and sisters 443 00:22:29,957 --> 00:22:31,785 or their younger brothers and sisters, 444 00:22:31,915 --> 00:22:33,090 and then, you know, it just began 445 00:22:33,221 --> 00:22:35,919 to permeate the entire culture. 446 00:22:36,050 --> 00:22:39,009 The idea for A Nightmare on Elm Street 447 00:22:39,140 --> 00:22:41,969 came to Wes Craven after he read stories 448 00:22:42,099 --> 00:22:44,972 about healthy young adults screaming incoherently 449 00:22:45,102 --> 00:22:48,758 before dying in their sleep, a mysterious disorder 450 00:22:48,889 --> 00:22:53,023 that came to be known as Nocturnal Death Syndrome. 451 00:22:53,154 --> 00:22:55,983 Craven conjured up the story of a villain 452 00:22:56,113 --> 00:22:58,681 that terrorizes you in your sleep. 453 00:22:58,812 --> 00:23:01,858 And if you die in your dream, you're done for. 454 00:23:01,989 --> 00:23:04,034 While writing the script, 455 00:23:04,165 --> 00:23:07,777 Craven named the nightmare killer after a childhood bully, 456 00:23:07,908 --> 00:23:09,388 Fred Krueger. 457 00:23:09,518 --> 00:23:11,390 Nightmare on Elm Street started on a Friday. 458 00:23:15,002 --> 00:23:17,047 And I couldn't get anyone to go see it with me, 459 00:23:17,178 --> 00:23:19,049 'cause I wanted to see it, like, at noon 460 00:23:19,180 --> 00:23:20,137 and nobody would go and see it with me. 461 00:23:20,268 --> 00:23:22,009 So I had to go see it by myself. 462 00:23:22,139 --> 00:23:23,010 And, of course, who's in the theater at noon? 463 00:23:23,140 --> 00:23:24,968 Nobody. Me. Just me. 464 00:23:25,099 --> 00:23:26,709 So I'm sitting in the theater by myself, 465 00:23:26,840 --> 00:23:28,537 and I'm in Greenville, North Carolina. 466 00:23:31,975 --> 00:23:33,890 And I start watching this movie, 467 00:23:34,021 --> 00:23:35,675 and I get so scared... 468 00:23:35,805 --> 00:23:36,937 Shit. 469 00:23:37,067 --> 00:23:38,068 ...and I get a cramp in my leg. 470 00:23:38,199 --> 00:23:39,635 I had to walk up and down the aisle 471 00:23:39,766 --> 00:23:40,854 'cause I wouldn't leave the theater. 472 00:23:40,984 --> 00:23:42,508 I had to see what was gonna happen. 473 00:23:46,599 --> 00:23:49,079 And I changed seats and I moved closer to the exit. 474 00:23:49,210 --> 00:23:52,300 And, I mean, I was terrified. That movie really scared me. 475 00:23:52,431 --> 00:23:54,824 It actually scared me the first three times I saw it. 476 00:23:54,955 --> 00:23:56,739 I had to go back and see it again, 477 00:23:56,870 --> 00:23:59,089 and it scared me almost more so than the first time 478 00:23:59,220 --> 00:24:00,700 because I knew what was gonna happen, 479 00:24:00,830 --> 00:24:02,832 so I was scared before it happened. 480 00:24:02,963 --> 00:24:04,921 That movie was awesome. 481 00:24:05,052 --> 00:24:08,838 Nightmare on Elm Street is about a serial killer, 482 00:24:08,969 --> 00:24:13,016 Freddy Krueger, who haunts you in your dreams, you know? 483 00:24:13,147 --> 00:24:16,933 And he is-- he's taken revenge on the children of Elm Street 484 00:24:17,064 --> 00:24:18,152 for something that their parents did. 485 00:24:18,282 --> 00:24:19,980 And he comes to them in their dreams, 486 00:24:20,110 --> 00:24:21,938 and if you die in your dreams, you die for real. 487 00:24:22,069 --> 00:24:23,113 Dreams are a safe place. 488 00:24:23,244 --> 00:24:24,898 Dreams are where fun things happen. 489 00:24:25,028 --> 00:24:27,770 Dreams are where you wake up and it's over. 490 00:24:27,901 --> 00:24:30,338 And the idea that whatever taunts you 491 00:24:30,469 --> 00:24:33,123 and stalks you in your dreams can come to reality, 492 00:24:33,254 --> 00:24:35,343 or if you die in your dreams, you die for good-- 493 00:24:35,474 --> 00:24:37,606 I mean, that's beyond your control. That's terrifying. 494 00:24:42,045 --> 00:24:46,397 As a horror theme and as a trap, 495 00:24:46,528 --> 00:24:49,966 the nightmares-- the dream, the bad dream, the gimmick-- 496 00:24:50,097 --> 00:24:51,707 it's universal. 497 00:24:54,014 --> 00:24:56,146 To have also it inhabited 498 00:24:56,277 --> 00:24:59,759 by this man that lives in that world... 499 00:25:03,110 --> 00:25:06,505 this boogieman that inhabits the dream, 500 00:25:06,635 --> 00:25:07,897 once you've heard of him, you know, 501 00:25:08,028 --> 00:25:08,942 he can get to your subconscious... 502 00:25:09,072 --> 00:25:10,944 Who are you? 503 00:25:11,074 --> 00:25:13,773 ...and take you down, down the stairs 504 00:25:13,903 --> 00:25:15,949 into the nightmare boiler room. 505 00:25:18,081 --> 00:25:20,997 That movie had such a deep impact on me. 506 00:25:26,046 --> 00:25:27,526 Took place in the suburbs. 507 00:25:27,656 --> 00:25:30,180 I grew up in the suburbs, newly integrated suburbs. 508 00:25:30,311 --> 00:25:33,053 So there was sort of a feeling of unease. 509 00:25:33,183 --> 00:25:34,968 You didn't know how your neighbors felt about you. 510 00:25:35,098 --> 00:25:36,535 You didn't know what would pop off. 511 00:25:36,665 --> 00:25:38,232 We had people throwing tomatoes against our house 512 00:25:38,362 --> 00:25:40,147 and all kinds of stuff. 513 00:25:40,277 --> 00:25:42,715 So the suburban horror feel had me from hello. 514 00:25:42,845 --> 00:25:44,978 Wes wanted that. 515 00:25:45,108 --> 00:25:48,938 He wanted this sort of damaged suburbia. 516 00:25:49,896 --> 00:25:52,942 And he was making the adults in these movies 517 00:25:53,073 --> 00:25:55,205 vulnerable and flawed. 518 00:25:56,206 --> 00:26:00,559 That meant the kids were sort of without adults for advice. 519 00:26:02,299 --> 00:26:03,866 It really dealt with the sins of our fathers. 520 00:26:03,997 --> 00:26:05,085 I mean, these children were pretty innocent. 521 00:26:05,215 --> 00:26:06,521 It was what their parents did 522 00:26:06,652 --> 00:26:07,957 that they were being punished for. 523 00:26:08,088 --> 00:26:09,132 It was out of their control. 524 00:26:09,263 --> 00:26:10,873 This man was coming for them 525 00:26:11,004 --> 00:26:12,396 because of something their parents did. 526 00:26:12,527 --> 00:26:14,311 So that sort of "sins of our father" theme 527 00:26:14,442 --> 00:26:17,227 that ran through that movie, I thought was really scary. 528 00:26:17,358 --> 00:26:20,361 There's something about the way Freddy moves 529 00:26:20,491 --> 00:26:23,973 that's animal-like, that's cat-like, 530 00:26:24,104 --> 00:26:26,236 that's even reptilian at times. 531 00:26:26,367 --> 00:26:28,282 And I think that that's what I bring 532 00:26:28,412 --> 00:26:32,112 to sort of Freddy's scare factor. 533 00:26:32,242 --> 00:26:36,116 The claw with the knife fingers 534 00:26:36,246 --> 00:26:38,988 on the old gardening glove-- 535 00:26:39,119 --> 00:26:42,905 that not only manifests great in silhouette and shadow, 536 00:26:43,036 --> 00:26:46,213 but it's something about it extending evil 537 00:26:46,343 --> 00:26:50,043 or amplifying the evil that is just Freddy. 538 00:26:50,173 --> 00:26:52,262 That is the scariest thing-- those knives, 539 00:26:52,393 --> 00:26:56,266 the taunting nature of his attacks. 540 00:26:56,397 --> 00:26:59,966 Freddy Krueger definitely was my scariest villain. 541 00:27:06,581 --> 00:27:09,453 The push is on to find a cure for AIDS. 542 00:27:09,584 --> 00:27:12,979 Since June of 1981, about 1,800 cases have been reported, 543 00:27:13,109 --> 00:27:14,545 mostly in the gay community, 544 00:27:14,676 --> 00:27:17,331 and more than 600 people have died. 545 00:27:17,461 --> 00:27:19,855 In the early '80s, nothing was more terrifying 546 00:27:19,986 --> 00:27:21,335 than an unidentified virus 547 00:27:21,465 --> 00:27:23,293 that could incubate in the body for years 548 00:27:23,424 --> 00:27:26,949 and, when it struck, was a death sentence. 549 00:27:27,080 --> 00:27:29,430 There was panic in the air as the AIDS epidemic 550 00:27:29,560 --> 00:27:32,999 decimated a generation of gay men. 551 00:27:33,129 --> 00:27:35,915 During the process, many people lost their sense of compassion 552 00:27:36,045 --> 00:27:38,787 and replaced it with homophobia. 553 00:27:38,918 --> 00:27:40,528 And AIDS generally caused 554 00:27:40,659 --> 00:27:43,966 and believed to be caused by homosexual promiscuity. 555 00:27:44,097 --> 00:27:46,142 While doctors tried desperately to save lives 556 00:27:46,273 --> 00:27:49,276 and scientists pieced together how to fight it, 557 00:27:49,406 --> 00:27:52,061 the Reagan administration ignored the crisis. 558 00:27:52,192 --> 00:27:56,239 But horror filmmakers did not. 559 00:27:56,370 --> 00:27:58,981 When I moved to New York in the early '80s, 560 00:27:59,112 --> 00:28:01,810 AIDS did not exist in anybody's awareness. 561 00:28:06,510 --> 00:28:09,383 And then there was this thing called "gay cancer" 562 00:28:09,513 --> 00:28:12,342 in the Village, which just seems arbitrary and strange. 563 00:28:12,473 --> 00:28:14,127 And then suddenly it had a name-- AIDS. 564 00:28:14,257 --> 00:28:15,432 And then suddenly people were dying. 565 00:28:15,563 --> 00:28:18,261 And it was a slow-motion horror movie. 566 00:28:18,392 --> 00:28:20,307 I'd been diagnosed with AIDS-related complex 567 00:28:20,437 --> 00:28:22,135 for two and a half years now, 568 00:28:22,265 --> 00:28:24,006 and there's absolutely no drug I can take, 569 00:28:24,137 --> 00:28:26,095 and I'm slowly getting worse and worse. 570 00:28:26,226 --> 00:28:28,315 That's why we're here, to make a point. 571 00:28:28,445 --> 00:28:31,448 It took something which was potent and magical 572 00:28:31,579 --> 00:28:33,189 at that point-- sexuality-- 573 00:28:33,320 --> 00:28:36,410 and mixed it with the possibility of death. 574 00:28:36,540 --> 00:28:38,499 I was just coming into my own as an adult 575 00:28:38,629 --> 00:28:41,154 during the AIDS crisis, and I moved to New York, 576 00:28:41,284 --> 00:28:46,376 where The Village Voice was writing all of these articles 577 00:28:46,507 --> 00:28:49,249 on the lack of response the government had 578 00:28:49,379 --> 00:28:51,294 towards the AIDS crisis, and all these people were dying. 579 00:28:51,425 --> 00:28:52,992 You know, you were like, 580 00:28:53,122 --> 00:28:55,124 "Is being my true self gonna kill me?" 581 00:28:55,690 --> 00:28:57,170 The political climate was such 582 00:28:57,300 --> 00:28:58,475 that they didn't even speak of it. 583 00:28:58,606 --> 00:29:00,434 And so AIDS was a very terrifying thing 584 00:29:00,564 --> 00:29:03,263 because there was so much that was unknown about it. 585 00:29:03,393 --> 00:29:05,482 It is hard to explain to people 586 00:29:05,613 --> 00:29:09,182 who didn't live through the AIDS crisis how bad it was. 587 00:29:09,312 --> 00:29:11,227 AIDS is surreptitiously spreading 588 00:29:11,358 --> 00:29:13,099 throughout our population, 589 00:29:13,229 --> 00:29:16,363 and yet we have no accurate measure of its scope. 590 00:29:16,493 --> 00:29:19,409 I've asked the Department of Health and Human Services 591 00:29:19,540 --> 00:29:21,020 to add the AIDS virus 592 00:29:21,150 --> 00:29:23,457 to the list of contagious diseases 593 00:29:23,587 --> 00:29:26,199 for which immigrants and aliens seeking permanent residence 594 00:29:26,329 --> 00:29:29,332 in the United States can be denied entry. 595 00:29:33,119 --> 00:29:34,424 You had people in Congress 596 00:29:34,555 --> 00:29:36,557 saying you could get AIDS from mosquitoes, 597 00:29:36,687 --> 00:29:39,386 water fountains, someone spitting at you. 598 00:29:39,516 --> 00:29:41,475 You had idiots like me believing stories 599 00:29:41,605 --> 00:29:43,172 that someone at the mall was gonna scratch me 600 00:29:43,303 --> 00:29:45,044 with a needle and give me AIDS. 601 00:29:45,174 --> 00:29:47,220 We were out of our minds with panic. 602 00:29:47,350 --> 00:29:50,658 Movies like The Thing and The Fly 603 00:29:50,789 --> 00:29:54,531 acted as a release valve for the feelings of helplessness 604 00:29:54,662 --> 00:29:58,492 against a killer no one could see. 605 00:29:58,622 --> 00:30:00,624 And you find that vampire fiction pops up 606 00:30:00,755 --> 00:30:03,149 and gets super popular when there's a disease around. 607 00:30:06,413 --> 00:30:09,155 Fright Night is a perfect example, 608 00:30:09,285 --> 00:30:13,463 which really encapsulates all those fears of the sexually, 609 00:30:13,594 --> 00:30:16,118 you know, dick-slinging dude who lives next door. 610 00:30:18,164 --> 00:30:21,558 Like, what's he's spreading around? 611 00:30:21,689 --> 00:30:25,084 When I did Fright Night, which would have been in '84, 612 00:30:25,214 --> 00:30:28,435 uh, there was just some kind of disease 613 00:30:28,565 --> 00:30:30,219 that seemed to be affecting a lot of gays, 614 00:30:30,350 --> 00:30:31,960 but nobody knew why. 615 00:30:36,617 --> 00:30:40,273 I was losing gay friends that I loved. 616 00:30:40,403 --> 00:30:43,232 And I lost somebody that I really cared about. 617 00:30:43,363 --> 00:30:45,191 But we-- it was a sickness. 618 00:30:45,321 --> 00:30:48,498 We knew it, but we didn't know what the hell it was. 619 00:30:48,629 --> 00:30:50,239 People were starting to die. 620 00:30:50,370 --> 00:30:52,415 But the word "AIDS" was not around. 621 00:30:53,329 --> 00:30:56,506 You don't have to be afraid of me. 622 00:30:56,637 --> 00:31:00,641 I know what it's like being different. 623 00:31:00,771 --> 00:31:04,950 Only they won't pick on you anymore or beat you up. 624 00:31:07,169 --> 00:31:08,127 I'll see to that. 625 00:31:10,651 --> 00:31:12,435 All you have to do is take my hand. 626 00:31:12,566 --> 00:31:14,655 When I had Evil Ed, 627 00:31:14,785 --> 00:31:17,266 and Jerry says, "Take my hand"-- 628 00:31:17,397 --> 00:31:20,356 Jerry Dandridge, the vampire, says, to Evil Ed, the boy, 629 00:31:20,487 --> 00:31:23,229 "Take my hand and I'll make sure they never bother you 630 00:31:23,359 --> 00:31:26,145 or bully you in school again," 631 00:31:26,275 --> 00:31:27,929 and that was speaking to every gay kid out there 632 00:31:28,060 --> 00:31:31,237 that felt different and that couldn't come out about it. 633 00:31:38,548 --> 00:31:42,552 I put the gay overtones into it. 634 00:31:42,683 --> 00:31:45,468 Billy Cole's relationship with Jerry Dandridge-- 635 00:31:45,599 --> 00:31:48,515 he's the Guardian, the ghoul, 636 00:31:48,645 --> 00:31:50,560 the one who protects him during the day. 637 00:31:50,691 --> 00:31:53,041 But they could be lovers. Who knows? 638 00:31:56,740 --> 00:31:59,221 What are you-- 639 00:31:59,352 --> 00:32:00,657 All that was in there and it was meant 640 00:32:00,788 --> 00:32:03,965 to promote tolerance, you know, 641 00:32:04,096 --> 00:32:08,448 but in the day when that was not fashionable at all. 642 00:32:08,578 --> 00:32:11,799 So, yes, that was in there, and that was because 643 00:32:11,930 --> 00:32:15,716 I was touched and I was moved because I was losing friends. 644 00:32:15,846 --> 00:32:19,459 Horror movies are where we talk about 645 00:32:19,589 --> 00:32:22,592 what we don't want to talk about in day-to-day life-- 646 00:32:22,723 --> 00:32:26,379 outcasts and marginalized people who society feared. 647 00:32:26,509 --> 00:32:29,817 And I think it's a very, very short step sideways 648 00:32:29,948 --> 00:32:33,603 to get to gay men and the fear of them during the AIDS crisis 649 00:32:33,734 --> 00:32:37,346 and how sex and death and marginalized people 650 00:32:37,477 --> 00:32:39,392 were all linked together. 651 00:32:39,522 --> 00:32:40,480 When I came out with Fright Night, 652 00:32:40,610 --> 00:32:41,742 it was about vampires, 653 00:32:41,872 --> 00:32:43,396 and I went around with everybody, 654 00:32:43,526 --> 00:32:45,180 all the studios were saying to me, "Vampires? 655 00:32:45,311 --> 00:32:46,747 Nobody wants to see vampires." 656 00:32:46,877 --> 00:32:49,358 Because nobody wants to see vampire killers anymore, 657 00:32:49,489 --> 00:32:51,273 or vampires either. 658 00:32:51,404 --> 00:32:53,754 Apparently all they want are demented madmen 659 00:32:53,884 --> 00:32:57,192 running around in ski masks, hacking up young virgins. 660 00:32:57,323 --> 00:32:59,238 The vampire genre was dead and buried. 661 00:33:01,805 --> 00:33:03,546 One of the things that's also really interesting 662 00:33:03,677 --> 00:33:06,506 about vampires is they're the monster that looks like us. 663 00:33:06,636 --> 00:33:09,291 They live amongst us undetected. 664 00:33:09,422 --> 00:33:11,250 Hello, Charlie. 665 00:33:12,207 --> 00:33:14,209 We don't know if our neighbor is a vampire. 666 00:33:14,340 --> 00:33:15,471 I mean, they don't go outdoors at night. 667 00:33:15,602 --> 00:33:16,559 There are no mirrors in their house. 668 00:33:16,690 --> 00:33:18,561 They don't cast a shadow. 669 00:33:22,174 --> 00:33:25,525 There's something very funny at the idea of that-- 670 00:33:25,655 --> 00:33:29,311 of a boy, of a teenage horror fan 671 00:33:29,442 --> 00:33:32,662 trying to convince the police, his mother, his friends, 672 00:33:32,793 --> 00:33:34,838 that there is a vampire living next door. 673 00:33:34,969 --> 00:33:36,536 That's a funny idea. 674 00:33:36,666 --> 00:33:39,321 You hear that idea, and you smile and giggle. 675 00:33:39,452 --> 00:33:42,237 They did kill a girl over there. 676 00:33:42,368 --> 00:33:43,195 How late did you stay up studying? 677 00:33:43,325 --> 00:33:44,718 Mom, I'm not sick! 678 00:33:44,848 --> 00:33:46,633 The guy did have fangs, 679 00:33:46,763 --> 00:33:48,548 and a bat did fly over my head, 680 00:33:48,678 --> 00:33:50,419 and a second later, he stepped out of the shadows. 681 00:33:50,550 --> 00:33:52,334 Don't you see what that means? 682 00:33:52,465 --> 00:33:53,814 Wait, let me guess. 683 00:33:53,944 --> 00:33:55,424 What? 684 00:33:55,555 --> 00:33:58,340 He's a vampire. 685 00:33:58,471 --> 00:33:59,646 A what? 686 00:33:59,776 --> 00:34:01,517 If you look at Fright Night, 687 00:34:01,648 --> 00:34:04,825 it's Charley Brewster, the kid next door, 688 00:34:04,955 --> 00:34:07,523 trying to stop the bloodsucker next door. 689 00:34:07,654 --> 00:34:10,352 And his girlfriend is in danger of being seduced. 690 00:34:10,483 --> 00:34:14,182 But the real hero's journey is Peter Vincent. 691 00:34:15,836 --> 00:34:17,707 Peter Vincent's a great vampire killer 692 00:34:17,838 --> 00:34:21,320 because he's a ham actor and his whole life 693 00:34:21,450 --> 00:34:24,018 is built on what he considers a lie. 694 00:34:24,149 --> 00:34:25,759 Vampire killers? There are no vampires. 695 00:34:25,889 --> 00:34:28,849 That's the most ridiculous thing in the world, and then... 696 00:34:28,979 --> 00:34:30,764 - Come on, let's get out of here. - Just a minute. 697 00:34:30,894 --> 00:34:32,722 That goes for you, too, Ed. 698 00:34:32,853 --> 00:34:34,507 I expect we have a lot of the same interests, 699 00:34:34,637 --> 00:34:36,639 you know, in horror movies and the occult. 700 00:34:39,816 --> 00:34:41,514 Something wrong, Mr. Vincent? 701 00:34:41,644 --> 00:34:44,734 Peter Vincent rises to the occasion. 702 00:34:44,865 --> 00:34:48,390 He goes in with Charley into the Dandridge house 703 00:34:48,521 --> 00:34:51,306 to do battle with the most ferocious vampire 704 00:34:51,437 --> 00:34:55,528 and his ghoulish assistant, Billy Cole. 705 00:34:55,658 --> 00:34:58,531 He finds his courage. He's The Cowardly Lion. 706 00:34:58,661 --> 00:35:01,621 He does that because he likes the kids. 707 00:35:01,751 --> 00:35:03,797 He likes Charley, and he likes Amy. 708 00:35:03,927 --> 00:35:05,886 And if he doesn't help them, 709 00:35:06,016 --> 00:35:08,758 Jerry Dandridge is gonna turn her into a vampire. 710 00:35:08,889 --> 00:35:12,327 A horror movie is effective in direct proportion 711 00:35:12,458 --> 00:35:14,590 to how much you care about the people 712 00:35:14,721 --> 00:35:16,679 whose lives are in danger. 713 00:35:16,810 --> 00:35:19,247 Ah! Ah! 714 00:35:19,378 --> 00:35:20,727 Aaaah! 715 00:35:20,857 --> 00:35:23,164 No! 716 00:35:31,738 --> 00:35:35,611 In 1987, the criticism of aggressive capitalism 717 00:35:35,742 --> 00:35:36,873 in the Oliver Stone film Wall Street 718 00:35:37,004 --> 00:35:39,049 was somewhat lost on a public 719 00:35:39,180 --> 00:35:42,749 that saw glamour and status in the pursuit of more money 720 00:35:42,879 --> 00:35:47,536 or drugs or cars or everything, 721 00:35:47,667 --> 00:35:52,019 a culture that celebrated excess. 722 00:35:52,150 --> 00:35:56,632 But horror films like Poltergeist and Society 723 00:35:56,763 --> 00:35:58,765 made their own commentary 724 00:35:58,895 --> 00:36:02,334 about America's conspicuous consumerism 725 00:36:02,464 --> 00:36:04,945 and economic inequality. 726 00:36:05,075 --> 00:36:08,644 Just a year after Wall Street was released, 727 00:36:08,775 --> 00:36:11,691 They Live tackled America's existential crisis 728 00:36:11,821 --> 00:36:14,563 of averse and greed 729 00:36:14,694 --> 00:36:17,653 and the conflict between the haves and the have nots. 730 00:36:18,437 --> 00:36:22,702 I have come here to chew bubble gum and kick ass. 731 00:36:26,009 --> 00:36:28,969 And I'm all out of bubble gum. 732 00:36:29,099 --> 00:36:32,494 My favorite two films are The Shining and They Live. 733 00:36:32,625 --> 00:36:33,930 Like, the first time I ever heard of They Live 734 00:36:34,061 --> 00:36:37,020 was a friend of mine in middle school, 735 00:36:37,151 --> 00:36:40,676 and he couldn't remember the name of the movie. 736 00:36:40,807 --> 00:36:42,461 But he kept telling me about-- he's like, 737 00:36:42,591 --> 00:36:43,984 "There's this film where this guy, 738 00:36:44,114 --> 00:36:46,726 he puts on a pair of sunglasses and he sees aliens." 739 00:36:46,856 --> 00:36:49,816 And I thought he was completely making it up. 740 00:36:49,946 --> 00:36:51,426 I've got one that can see. 741 00:36:56,083 --> 00:36:57,476 They Live is sort of a movie 742 00:36:57,606 --> 00:36:59,913 that's light-years ahead of its time. 743 00:37:00,043 --> 00:37:03,438 It's really a film about the reality that we live in. 744 00:37:03,569 --> 00:37:06,572 They Live is incredibly about Reaganomics. 745 00:37:06,702 --> 00:37:08,226 Like, that is the focus of it. 746 00:37:12,795 --> 00:37:15,102 We see this guy. He is working-class. 747 00:37:15,233 --> 00:37:18,758 He's going from gig to gig, trying to start-- find jobs. 748 00:37:18,888 --> 00:37:21,935 The movie even opens with him in kind of an encampment 749 00:37:22,065 --> 00:37:24,720 in downtown L.A., trying to find another gig 750 00:37:24,851 --> 00:37:27,854 and figure out what's next. 751 00:37:27,984 --> 00:37:29,203 And through a course of events, 752 00:37:29,334 --> 00:37:30,900 he happens upon a pair of sunglasses 753 00:37:31,031 --> 00:37:33,860 that literally reveal the world to him 754 00:37:33,990 --> 00:37:35,862 and show him that everything 755 00:37:35,992 --> 00:37:39,779 that he has believed about society is utter shit. 756 00:37:39,909 --> 00:37:43,609 You're always looking for a visual way in movies 757 00:37:43,739 --> 00:37:45,263 to get your point across. 758 00:37:49,963 --> 00:37:52,444 And in this case, in They Live, 759 00:37:52,574 --> 00:37:53,923 I wanted to show the difference 760 00:37:54,054 --> 00:37:56,970 between the reality that we all live in 761 00:37:57,100 --> 00:38:00,452 and the reality that exists for the aliens, 762 00:38:00,582 --> 00:38:02,497 which is very different. 763 00:38:02,628 --> 00:38:05,500 So I came up with sunglasses. 764 00:38:05,631 --> 00:38:06,893 What's your problem? 765 00:38:07,023 --> 00:38:08,938 With the glasses on, you see the truth. 766 00:38:09,069 --> 00:38:12,899 You take the glasses off, it's all deception. 767 00:38:13,029 --> 00:38:15,467 I said, what's your problem? 768 00:38:15,597 --> 00:38:17,817 The first time I saw 769 00:38:17,947 --> 00:38:19,819 you know, the reveal, it's like, 770 00:38:19,949 --> 00:38:21,647 "That shit's creepy." 771 00:38:27,217 --> 00:38:29,350 I was like, you know, "What was the inspiration 772 00:38:29,481 --> 00:38:32,005 for that," you know? And I asked John and he said, 773 00:38:32,135 --> 00:38:34,007 "Well, it came to me in a dream one night," 774 00:38:34,137 --> 00:38:36,836 and I said, "Whoa. I don't want to be in your head." 775 00:38:36,966 --> 00:38:39,491 Well, the role in They Live of John Nada 776 00:38:39,621 --> 00:38:41,580 was a working man. 777 00:38:41,710 --> 00:38:43,843 He was a guy who works with his hands. 778 00:38:43,973 --> 00:38:45,845 He was working poor. 779 00:38:45,975 --> 00:38:50,850 So a movie star-type guy doesn't-- I don't believe. 780 00:38:50,980 --> 00:38:54,549 But Roddy I believed 'cause he came from the streets. 781 00:38:54,680 --> 00:38:56,899 He had some mileage on him. 782 00:38:57,030 --> 00:38:58,814 He was perfect for the role. 783 00:38:58,945 --> 00:39:01,904 Frank and Nada met as two homeless guys. 784 00:39:02,035 --> 00:39:03,558 There's a place over on Fourth Street. 785 00:39:03,689 --> 00:39:05,125 They got hot food and showers. 786 00:39:05,255 --> 00:39:07,475 I'm going that way if you want me to show you. 787 00:39:09,477 --> 00:39:12,872 And what we represented was the working homeless. 788 00:39:13,002 --> 00:39:15,004 Nobody ever talks about that. 789 00:39:15,135 --> 00:39:16,963 But there are a lot of guys who are homeless. 790 00:39:17,093 --> 00:39:19,139 They just can't afford housing. 791 00:39:19,269 --> 00:39:25,319 It reeks of how our government does not take care of us. 792 00:39:25,450 --> 00:39:26,799 In the richest country in the world, 793 00:39:26,929 --> 00:39:28,757 still you have all this, you know, 794 00:39:28,888 --> 00:39:30,977 devastating homelessness. 795 00:39:31,107 --> 00:39:34,589 You have, you know, a lot of haves. 796 00:39:34,720 --> 00:39:39,115 And nobody wants to deal with the have nots. 797 00:39:39,246 --> 00:39:41,683 They Live doesn't feel like a lot of '80s horror films, 798 00:39:41,814 --> 00:39:44,120 because when we look at 1980s, what we're seeing 799 00:39:44,251 --> 00:39:46,035 is these really flashy horror films, 800 00:39:46,166 --> 00:39:48,037 and they're about upper middle-class kids 801 00:39:48,168 --> 00:39:50,779 who are ripped from their, you know, fancy lives 802 00:39:50,910 --> 00:39:52,825 and forced to deal with a killer. 803 00:39:52,955 --> 00:39:56,219 But They Live is talking about poor society from the beginning. 804 00:39:56,350 --> 00:40:00,528 It's a marginalized group who is fighting this massive machine. 805 00:40:00,659 --> 00:40:02,051 Look, you crazy mother-- 806 00:40:02,182 --> 00:40:04,706 - Put these on. - Hey! Stay away from me. 807 00:40:04,837 --> 00:40:07,056 I'm telling you, you dumb son of a-- 808 00:40:07,187 --> 00:40:08,884 I think, like, the thing that I found most impressive 809 00:40:09,015 --> 00:40:12,584 about the film initially was the big fight scene... 810 00:40:16,109 --> 00:40:18,894 ...that they just did this long sequence without any music, 811 00:40:19,025 --> 00:40:21,723 and it's just these characters beating up each other. 812 00:40:21,854 --> 00:40:23,508 I don't want to fight you. Stop it! 813 00:40:23,638 --> 00:40:25,031 No! 814 00:40:25,161 --> 00:40:28,904 Roddy Piper, the actor who plays John Nada, 815 00:40:29,035 --> 00:40:30,906 is a professional wrestler. 816 00:40:31,037 --> 00:40:34,823 And what better opportunity than to do a very long, 817 00:40:34,954 --> 00:40:38,784 involved, extended fight scene? 818 00:40:38,914 --> 00:40:41,090 And Keith David was his costar, 819 00:40:41,221 --> 00:40:44,093 and Keith was absolutely ready to go. 820 00:40:46,313 --> 00:40:51,100 So they rehearsed for a month and a half, 821 00:40:51,231 --> 00:40:53,842 and in the backyard of our office. 822 00:40:53,973 --> 00:40:56,105 Jeff Imada was the stunt coordinator, 823 00:40:56,236 --> 00:40:57,672 and he worked with them, and they came up 824 00:40:57,803 --> 00:40:59,152 with this big fight, 825 00:40:59,282 --> 00:40:59,979 and we shot it in an alley, downtown L.A. 826 00:41:08,770 --> 00:41:10,076 God, we had a good time. 827 00:41:10,206 --> 00:41:12,948 I loved working on that fight. It was great. 828 00:41:13,079 --> 00:41:16,909 The worst part was fighting in that stinky-ass alleyway. 829 00:41:17,039 --> 00:41:19,085 They had to put rubber on the floor 830 00:41:19,215 --> 00:41:20,956 and paint it like it was the ground 831 00:41:21,087 --> 00:41:23,872 so we wouldn't have to be on a nasty, you know-- 832 00:41:24,003 --> 00:41:26,484 'cause downtown L.A. is no fun. 833 00:41:27,920 --> 00:41:30,531 Fuck! 834 00:41:30,662 --> 00:41:33,795 And it wasn't until years later that I looked at that 835 00:41:33,926 --> 00:41:35,710 and I realized that the reason that works 836 00:41:35,841 --> 00:41:37,712 is because it's not a pointless fight scene, 837 00:41:37,843 --> 00:41:40,759 is that that's a fight scene that represents 838 00:41:40,889 --> 00:41:42,891 sort of the reality we live in. 839 00:41:43,022 --> 00:41:45,851 It represents the differences in people's political beliefs 840 00:41:45,981 --> 00:41:49,898 and the fact that you can't change somebody's mind 841 00:41:50,029 --> 00:41:50,899 in a very simple way. 842 00:41:54,033 --> 00:41:55,948 That's the American way. 843 00:41:56,078 --> 00:41:58,907 They want us to fight with each other. 844 00:41:59,038 --> 00:42:01,562 But our cause is common. 845 00:42:01,693 --> 00:42:05,218 They pit the poor Black man against the poor white man 846 00:42:05,348 --> 00:42:08,134 and tell them that he's better than him, he deserves-- 847 00:42:08,264 --> 00:42:11,180 when, you know, together, you're far more powerful 848 00:42:11,311 --> 00:42:14,009 than you are apart. 849 00:42:21,103 --> 00:42:26,892 They Live is about what happens in our American society 850 00:42:27,022 --> 00:42:29,938 when greed is unchecked... 851 00:42:32,114 --> 00:42:38,947 and the society loses its core values. 852 00:42:39,078 --> 00:42:41,080 The underground terrorist network 853 00:42:41,210 --> 00:42:43,996 has been destroyed here on the west coast. 854 00:42:44,126 --> 00:42:48,087 Well, I've tried to avoid statements in my movies 855 00:42:48,217 --> 00:42:50,959 since I think they don't work. 856 00:42:51,090 --> 00:42:54,006 But in this case, in the case of "They Live," 857 00:42:54,136 --> 00:42:58,401 I was so fed up with Reaganomics. 858 00:42:58,532 --> 00:43:02,754 What I mean by that is unrestrained capitalism. 859 00:43:04,582 --> 00:43:06,018 It was a cry in the darkness 860 00:43:06,148 --> 00:43:09,195 because Reagan was enormously popular 861 00:43:09,325 --> 00:43:11,240 and no one else saw things the way I did. 862 00:43:11,371 --> 00:43:14,809 And I just had to. I had to do it. 863 00:43:14,940 --> 00:43:16,855 - ...like shit. - What happened? 864 00:43:16,985 --> 00:43:19,771 So that's what They Live is about. 865 00:43:19,901 --> 00:43:22,034 It's about [chuckles] the fact 866 00:43:22,164 --> 00:43:23,992 that Reaganism is controlled by aliens. 867 00:43:24,123 --> 00:43:26,125 - - You're moving on. 868 00:43:26,255 --> 00:43:28,780 Hey, what's wrong, baby? 869 00:43:34,133 --> 00:43:36,352 By the late '80s, after a decade of hits, 870 00:43:36,483 --> 00:43:38,224 the great slasher franchises 871 00:43:38,354 --> 00:43:40,966 seemed to have burned themselves out. 872 00:43:41,096 --> 00:43:43,969 The genre seemingly stalled. 873 00:43:44,099 --> 00:43:48,147 By the early 1990s, Gen-Xers turned disinterest 874 00:43:48,277 --> 00:43:50,279 into a cultural trend. 875 00:43:50,410 --> 00:43:52,891 Disaffected and cynical, 876 00:43:53,021 --> 00:43:54,936 the so-called "slacker generation" 877 00:43:55,067 --> 00:43:58,113 was bored of everything, including genre films. 878 00:43:58,244 --> 00:44:00,376 The horror movie tropes were played out. 879 00:44:00,507 --> 00:44:02,291 Audiences knew all the rules, 880 00:44:02,422 --> 00:44:05,294 or at least they thought they did. 881 00:44:05,425 --> 00:44:07,122 Well, I'm getting ready to watch a video. 882 00:44:07,253 --> 00:44:08,950 Really? What? 883 00:44:09,081 --> 00:44:10,996 Oh, just some scary movie. 884 00:44:11,126 --> 00:44:13,259 - You like scary movies? - Uh-huh. 885 00:44:13,389 --> 00:44:16,218 In 1996, I was working on my PhD 886 00:44:16,349 --> 00:44:17,916 at Florida State University. 887 00:44:22,529 --> 00:44:24,009 There was a knock on my door. 888 00:44:24,139 --> 00:44:25,314 A guy I know from class, he said, 889 00:44:25,445 --> 00:44:26,968 "Hey, man, I'm taking you to a movie." 890 00:44:27,099 --> 00:44:28,753 And I said, "No, I'm halfway through a story. 891 00:44:28,883 --> 00:44:30,493 I gotta do this," and he said, "No, I'm taking you to a movie." 892 00:44:30,624 --> 00:44:32,017 And it was Scream. 893 00:44:32,147 --> 00:44:33,975 Why do you want to know my name? 894 00:44:34,106 --> 00:44:36,717 'Cause I want to know who I'm looking at. 895 00:44:36,848 --> 00:44:39,328 And I was there myself alone for the next six nights. 896 00:44:39,459 --> 00:44:41,287 I saw Scream seven nights in the theater, 897 00:44:41,417 --> 00:44:43,419 in its first run, I guess. 898 00:44:43,550 --> 00:44:46,292 And ever since then, I watch it probably every four weeks, 899 00:44:46,422 --> 00:44:47,423 if not more. 900 00:44:47,554 --> 00:44:49,904 I think it is fairly genius. 901 00:44:50,035 --> 00:44:51,906 Is this some kind of joke? 902 00:44:52,037 --> 00:44:54,692 More of a game, really. 903 00:44:54,822 --> 00:44:56,389 The idea for Scream was a little twofold. 904 00:44:56,519 --> 00:45:00,262 I wrote a one-act play in college about a young girl 905 00:45:00,393 --> 00:45:02,177 on the phone with a serial killer, 906 00:45:02,308 --> 00:45:04,397 and it just sat in a box and nothing ever happened to it. 907 00:45:04,527 --> 00:45:07,313 And I forgot all about it, and then years later, 908 00:45:07,443 --> 00:45:10,272 I was housesitting for a friend, and I walked into the den 909 00:45:10,403 --> 00:45:12,448 and I saw that the window was open. 910 00:45:12,579 --> 00:45:15,321 And I went, "Has this window been open the whole time?" 911 00:45:15,451 --> 00:45:17,323 And I got so terrified and called a friend of mine up. 912 00:45:17,453 --> 00:45:19,281 And I said, "All right, I think someone's in the house." 913 00:45:20,239 --> 00:45:22,894 So I got a knife and I walked through the house, 914 00:45:23,024 --> 00:45:24,417 just like a final girl, 915 00:45:24,547 --> 00:45:27,072 and I was looking through the-- in the shower. 916 00:45:27,202 --> 00:45:29,204 I was looking under the bed. I was looking in the closet. 917 00:45:29,335 --> 00:45:31,467 And I got so scared, and my friend was on the phone, 918 00:45:31,598 --> 00:45:33,382 going... 919 00:45:33,513 --> 00:45:35,428 Terrifying me, scared. 920 00:45:35,558 --> 00:45:37,212 And then we got into this big debate about horror films, 921 00:45:37,343 --> 00:45:38,736 and then I went, "Oh! 922 00:45:38,866 --> 00:45:41,260 I wrote a comedy about this in college." 923 00:45:41,390 --> 00:45:45,090 And so I dug it out and I brushed it off. 924 00:45:45,220 --> 00:45:46,047 That was the first scene. 925 00:45:49,268 --> 00:45:51,357 Scream was another one of those kind of like, you know, 926 00:45:51,487 --> 00:45:54,273 touchstone kind of horror movies for me growing up, 927 00:45:54,403 --> 00:45:57,015 one of the best theatrical experiences I ever had. 928 00:45:57,145 --> 00:46:00,496 And I was so blown away by especially the first 929 00:46:00,627 --> 00:46:02,977 like six or seven minutes or whatever it is 930 00:46:03,108 --> 00:46:04,326 with Drew Barrymore. 931 00:46:04,457 --> 00:46:06,024 Drew Barrymore opening up a horror film 932 00:46:06,154 --> 00:46:07,242 and then dying, you know, in 10 minutes-- 933 00:46:07,373 --> 00:46:09,767 that was unprecedented. 934 00:46:09,897 --> 00:46:13,031 That's the alternate ending to the movie. 935 00:46:13,161 --> 00:46:15,250 She lives. 936 00:46:15,381 --> 00:46:17,775 It was a calculated risk, and we didn't know whether 937 00:46:17,905 --> 00:46:21,039 the audience would even forgive us for that. 938 00:46:21,169 --> 00:46:22,475 They did, thankfully. But yeah. 939 00:46:22,605 --> 00:46:25,217 It was a very risky film in many, many ways. 940 00:46:25,347 --> 00:46:28,437 That first opening scene was like, I think-- 941 00:46:28,568 --> 00:46:30,396 I think still probably one of the best sequences 942 00:46:30,526 --> 00:46:32,267 in any movie, not just horror movies. 943 00:46:32,398 --> 00:46:34,400 It's one of my favorite of all time. 944 00:46:34,530 --> 00:46:38,839 I think that the film resonated with a large audience 945 00:46:38,970 --> 00:46:44,149 because it was this beautiful blend of camp and culture. 946 00:46:48,675 --> 00:46:50,285 It felt extremely relevant. 947 00:46:50,416 --> 00:46:52,374 Okay, bye now. 948 00:46:52,505 --> 00:46:55,638 If you hang up on me, you'll die just like your mother! 949 00:46:55,769 --> 00:46:57,423 I remember my parents-- 950 00:46:57,553 --> 00:46:59,251 like, when my dad got a cellphone in the car, 951 00:46:59,381 --> 00:47:00,818 like, that was, like, mind-blowing, you know? 952 00:47:00,948 --> 00:47:03,298 Like, the killer having a cellphone in your yard? 953 00:47:03,429 --> 00:47:06,301 It's like, what? 954 00:47:06,432 --> 00:47:08,477 Like, that is brand-new for the killer to be like 955 00:47:08,608 --> 00:47:11,132 also really, like, technologically savvy. 956 00:47:11,263 --> 00:47:13,004 Horrifying. 957 00:47:15,658 --> 00:47:19,662 Before Scream, slasher movies had kind of existed 958 00:47:19,793 --> 00:47:22,709 in a side world where there were no slasher movies. 959 00:47:22,840 --> 00:47:24,232 What Scream did was it allowed 960 00:47:24,363 --> 00:47:27,148 that Halloween existed, that Jason Voorhees existed, 961 00:47:27,279 --> 00:47:30,108 that this whole history of slashers existed. 962 00:47:30,238 --> 00:47:32,675 And, to me, that was revolutionary. 963 00:47:32,806 --> 00:47:34,416 You know, Scream was sort of the first movie 964 00:47:34,547 --> 00:47:39,117 that I feel like actually talked about horror movies so openly 965 00:47:39,247 --> 00:47:42,163 and allowed them to be exposed. 966 00:47:42,294 --> 00:47:44,470 There are certain rules that one must abide by 967 00:47:44,600 --> 00:47:47,560 in order to successfully survive a horror movie. 968 00:47:47,690 --> 00:47:49,562 The rules of horror-- I had the luxury of the '80s. 969 00:47:49,692 --> 00:47:51,303 I had the luxury of all the tropes. 970 00:47:51,433 --> 00:47:52,652 When I went into Scream, I was able to look 971 00:47:52,782 --> 00:47:55,263 at all the movies that had come before it 972 00:47:55,394 --> 00:47:57,048 and sort of acknowledge them. 973 00:47:57,178 --> 00:48:00,660 Scream revitalized the genre. 974 00:48:00,790 --> 00:48:05,143 The meta, self-referential winks and nods to the horror films 975 00:48:05,273 --> 00:48:06,535 the audience had grown up watching 976 00:48:06,666 --> 00:48:09,364 thrilled fans and sparked renewed interest 977 00:48:09,495 --> 00:48:11,279 in scary movies. 978 00:48:11,410 --> 00:48:13,891 Scream treated its audience with respect 979 00:48:14,021 --> 00:48:17,329 by acknowledging all the clichés of the genre 980 00:48:17,459 --> 00:48:21,202 and then using them anyway to scare the hell out of them. 981 00:48:21,333 --> 00:48:24,597 Once again, clever filmmakers were elevating 982 00:48:24,727 --> 00:48:26,512 and refreshing the form, 983 00:48:26,642 --> 00:48:30,168 and the audience was the true winner. 984 00:48:30,298 --> 00:48:31,560 You know, what I love about Scream 985 00:48:31,691 --> 00:48:33,606 is that it's a love letter to the genre, 986 00:48:33,736 --> 00:48:36,391 but it's a love letter that calls out the formula, 987 00:48:36,522 --> 00:48:39,307 the conventions, the excess of the genre. 988 00:48:39,438 --> 00:48:41,309 But it's not the kind of parody 989 00:48:41,440 --> 00:48:43,398 that undercuts and seeks to destroy. 990 00:48:43,529 --> 00:48:45,574 It's a kind of parody that hopes to burn off the excess 991 00:48:45,705 --> 00:48:49,230 and let the genre move through better. 992 00:48:49,361 --> 00:48:51,363 This is the moment when the supposedly dead killer 993 00:48:51,493 --> 00:48:54,453 comes back to life for one last scare. 994 00:48:54,583 --> 00:48:56,411 Ah! 995 00:48:59,545 --> 00:49:01,416 Not in my movie. 996 00:49:01,547 --> 00:49:05,290 I think Scream, because it was able to summarize 997 00:49:05,420 --> 00:49:07,814 all the great things that we loved about these movies 998 00:49:07,945 --> 00:49:13,211 and kind of also do a really good version of that itself, 999 00:49:13,341 --> 00:49:15,213 it's almost like the genre really peaked there 1000 00:49:15,343 --> 00:49:17,650 because, you know, after Scream, 1001 00:49:17,780 --> 00:49:21,393 there wasn't a ton to say 'cause they kind of said it all. 1002 00:49:21,523 --> 00:49:23,438 They at least summarized it. 1003 00:49:23,569 --> 00:49:24,700 First test screening we had, 1004 00:49:24,831 --> 00:49:26,354 and the only test screening we had, 1005 00:49:26,485 --> 00:49:27,965 the test scores went through the roof. 1006 00:49:28,095 --> 00:49:30,532 I just had the feeling filming certain scenes 1007 00:49:30,663 --> 00:49:33,231 that this was extraordinary stuff, you know? 1008 00:49:33,361 --> 00:49:34,536 I had no idea how big it would be. 1009 00:49:34,667 --> 00:49:37,017 I had no idea its everlasting impression 1010 00:49:37,148 --> 00:49:39,759 or its everlasting effect that it would have on horror. 1011 00:49:39,889 --> 00:49:42,457 I just wrote a movie I wanted to see. 1012 00:49:42,588 --> 00:49:44,242 I was just trying to get noticed. 1013 00:49:44,372 --> 00:49:45,591 I was just trying to get a career. 1014 00:49:45,721 --> 00:49:47,549 I just wanted to tell a story. 1015 00:49:47,680 --> 00:49:49,290 I wanted to tell a horror story. 1016 00:49:49,421 --> 00:49:51,684 It's been always my goal to do my Halloween. 1017 00:49:51,814 --> 00:49:54,295 I look back at it as just a bunch of memories, you know? 1018 00:49:54,426 --> 00:49:56,341 It was all my memories with Wes Craven. 1019 00:49:56,471 --> 00:49:57,777 He was always a mentor to me. 1020 00:49:57,907 --> 00:49:59,779 He was always selfless and giving of his time, 1021 00:49:59,909 --> 00:50:02,869 and he always had answers to my questions. 1022 00:50:03,000 --> 00:50:04,697 I remember asking him, like, 1023 00:50:04,827 --> 00:50:06,003 "What does it feel like to be the master of horror?" 1024 00:50:06,133 --> 00:50:07,569 And he would look at me and go, "I don't know. 1025 00:50:07,700 --> 00:50:09,528 You should ask John Carpenter." 1026 00:50:09,658 --> 00:50:11,573 I think horror is a funhouse mirror 1027 00:50:11,704 --> 00:50:17,014 that reflects society's anxieties and dreads back at us. 1028 00:50:19,451 --> 00:50:21,844 Horror is most vital in times of stress, 1029 00:50:21,975 --> 00:50:26,458 be it political, economic, environmental, whatever it is. 1030 00:50:26,588 --> 00:50:28,460 I think horror is always a pulse on our society. 1031 00:50:28,590 --> 00:50:30,331 It never really goes away, you know? 1032 00:50:30,462 --> 00:50:31,680 So horror stories allow us to process through 1033 00:50:31,811 --> 00:50:33,508 from beginning to end 1034 00:50:33,639 --> 00:50:35,380 of whatever the bad experiences in our life. 1035 00:50:35,510 --> 00:50:37,556 Horror lets us imagine 1036 00:50:37,686 --> 00:50:39,036 a light at the end of the tunnel.