The behind-the-scenes commentary begins as Halloween Ends.
I'm David Green, the cowriter and director of the movie.
Who else is in this room with me?
I'm Hugo Garza, and there's nothing you can do about it.
My name is Atilla. I'm a coproducer and assistant director.
And then, joining us via Zoom, we've got two of our cast members.
I am Andi Matichak, and I play Allyson.
Howdy. I'm Rohan Campbell, and I play Corey.
And to clarify, Hugo,
you wanna say what yourjob is on this major motion picture?
I am one of the set PAs in the AD department
who is responsible for background,
but on your movies I get to do a lot more.
Including comments.
I like that they put Michael Myers in the-- in the logo.
Yeah, The Shape in the Blumhouse card.
Yeah, this was a discussion kind of later
once we started watching the movie with an audience
and doing test screenings, thinking of,
do you start with your ominous, traditional horror movie music score
or something like that?
But, as this movie is going to play a contrast in so many ways,
thought it would be cool to start with something upbeat and optimistic
as Halloween night in Haddonfield.
But it also has a darkness to it though, which is nice.
And for those discerning viewers
and fans of Halloween lll.' Season of the Witch,
-they'll notice our font is-- -The blue font!
Blue font is an homage to that film.
Hugo, you had a note about this opening.
Just the-- On the left of frame, the little boy throwing candy
at the little girl who opens her umbrella
and uses it as a shield and it bounces off of--
I set that background that day. It was fun.
All right.
This is the first shot I ever shot with you guys and--
Yeah, Rohan, why don't you talk about rolling into set that day?
Atilla pulled me out of a car, didn't tell me what I was shooting,
threw me on a bike, and then Cindy Mah, our props master,
threw a-- on-set props-- threw a backpack on me
and sort of kicked me in the back, and I biked into frame.
And I will say, the bike-- the bike is very tricky.
And the bike is tricky to ride. And-- Yeah.
- That was-- -Three days later, we had our cold open.
Rohan's very first moment on our set was a camera already rolling,
and he jumps on a bike, and I think we did one take, right?
I think we tried to do one more, but the first one was good enough.
It was-- We didn't need to.
S0 yesterday, I saw this the second time in this theater,
and that's the first time I realized the joke
when she says, "Corey, you're such a lifesaver."
- It took you that long? -Yeah.
Oh, my God.
I just found out about that joke right now.
I did too.
Was this the first stuff that you guys shot entirely?
Like day one was all the cold open stuff?
I remember it being the first week, but I don't remember exactly if--
It wasn't the first couple of days.
It might have been the end of the first week or soon,
but it was not-- it was not the first.
I'm gonna put the candy on the porch. Trick-or-treat kids can help themselves.
Close in!
Help yourself to anything in the fridge.
She made zucchini bread. It's actually good.
I love this mirror.
This house, this location was...
- So good. -...was absolutely insane.
The idea was that this opening would play like its own short film--
homages to a lot of slasher movies.
Movies like When a Stranger Calls
is something that I've always been haunted by since I was a kid and saw that,
and trying to think of the babysitter relationships
but put a little spin on it,
where this would be an unlikely character asked to babysit a kid,
a little bit out of his wheelhouse,
and then what drama could ensue.
No TV. And no more candy.
You guys can play till 8:30, 8:45.
Then he should go to bed.
- Easy money. -Yes.
Gonna come play with me or what?
This little kid was so funny.
We're gonna have a good time tonight.
Yeah, I always enjoy when you find those kids that aren't afraid of cameras,
aren't afraid to say what they think, and just let them unleash.
Did you always know exactly what monster movie was gonna be playing?
Yeah, in the original Halloween, Carpenter's Halloween,
they're watching a version of The Thing
on a television set when Laurie's babysitting,
and so I thought it would be kind of a fun homage to that
and also to bring Carpenter and his body of work into the mix,
'cause this film was not just a sequel to a John Carpenter film,
but in so many ways it was an homage to the tone of characters
and where the natural meets the supernatural
and so many things that I've loved about his movies,
from Christine to The Fog.
And The Thing is a movie that really affected me as a young viewer.
So many memes-- mean, Big Trouble in Little China--
so many of his films really affected me.
I wanted this movie to feel like it was plucked from that world of inspiration.
Just as much as if you watch a Stranger Things, you think,
"Well, there's such a Spielberg/Amblin note there."
I was kind of feeding more specifically
on John Carpenter's body for the inspiration for this movie.
And I also think it sets up, like, history repeating itself in Haddonfield
in a scary kind of way, where--
Like, Corey choosing the-- deciding between the beer and the chocolate milk.
Like, morally he makes the right choice,
but, you know, he's kind of fitting into Laurie Strode,
her position as a babysitter, The Things on TV,
he's by himself and his line, "I'm not a babysitter,"
is in that way--
It kind of foreshadows him not wanting to take the good path, but it's complex,
'cause he does stick with chocolate milk whenever we jump to the gas station.
But also, he's the one that turns off-- he's the one disturbed by the film.
You know, he's bothered by it, and he pretends it's for the kid's sake,
but it's-- it comes from him.
Jeremy?
Look at all the masks.
Christopher Nelson, our special effects makeup artist,
is certainly responsible for the Michael Myers mask and its evolution,
but also designing things like the Wolf Man mask that Jeremy wears
and the scarecrow mask to come.
It's just one of those things that you-- you can only imagine
the Halloweens and trick-or-treaters to come wearing these masks
outside of the obvious of the Halloween iconography.
Jeremy?
I also like this, the holiday jacket.
Yeah, the holiday jacket was such a good choice.
- You know-- -It's just such an obscure hol--
Yeah, it's so weird.
It's fun just working with Emily Gunshor, who was our costume designer.
The department heads and, for the most part, the entire crew
was on all three of these movies.
So it was really fun just to be able to develop that relationship.
Everybody kind of pushes each other to do something new, different, be better,
communicate more and inspire.
So you have ideas like that, the sense of trust,
that sense of jazz that comes with great camaraderie and collaboration.
Okay, with this part, I have this take where this house is kind of Freudian,
like, representing Corey's psyche,
and the attic being his subconscious, like the part that--
It's latent or recessive,
and the fear enters and calls him up there
to kind of inevitably pull him into this own part of himself
that he doesn't want to confront, but it's there.
And he gets trapped in there, 'cause he wants out, but it's scary.
And I think there's this image system set up through the whole movie.
It'll happen four times, but think about, if you're watching this,
like, every time Corey is in a scene
where someone gets thrown or falls off of a height
from really far, down toward the ground.
'Cause it happens more than once. It happens four times.
That's really cool.
One of the things I love about this franchise in particular
is just the discussions and the passions and the interpretations
and the evolution of it all.
And so, so many times over the last few years,
having been involved as a writer in these things,
that you get fans or collaborators,
people that are joining the storytelling,
come in and have these understandings, ways that they read what you've made,
some of which is intentional and some of which isn't,
and I just love it, you know.
Good or the bad, you kind of feel like people are talking about it,
it's affecting people, there's eyes awaiting it,
there's an appetite for it,
and we should be so lucky to be able to explore this mythology.
And this one particularly, I think there's a lot to chew on.
Is it your bedtime, Corey?
- Okay, Jeremy. -"Come out, come out, wherever you are."
You got me, buddy.
Okay, let me out.
-"Are you scared?" -Okay?
-"I in 21. I'm not scared." -Jeremy, let me out! Let me out!
I like going to this--
I watched it the second time last night, or the third time,
and I watched it this time thinking and observing things
and being like, "What actually happens?" You know?
Like, does he actually grab the knife downstairs and go up with it?
Did it actually disappear? Did Jeremy put it up there?
It's fun to watch the movie and be like,
"What if this is all from Corey's perspective?
What if he's the narrator?"
Wow. I love that.
And we do-- When we edit, we track all the various stories--
Jesus Christ.
Dude, oh, man, do you remember when that bounced?
The body bounced and everyone else went, "That might be too violent."
We were like, "I don't know. We gotta keep that."
It bounced so high.
And that's when the nuance of editing--
- Tim Alverson-- -The timing is so perfect.
Yeah, every frame is considered
and sometimes, even in what seems like one shot,
we'll lift a few frames in the middle of it.
And so, yeah, Tim, our editor,
and Derek, our assistant editor, additional editor,
we really work hard to try to find what the balance of grotesque and gritty
and real or unseen,
you know, how we're making those selections.
But that's what sitting in a dark room with a couple of dudes
for a bunch of months really, really does.
And at the end of the day, they say, "Time's up"
and you're done with the movie, so it's a fun journey with those guys.
How did this pumpkin intro come to be? 'Cause I wasn't around for any of that.
I mean, this is like one of my favorite intros to a Halloween movie ever.
It was cool. With each of the movies, we try to have some sort of theme
subtly told through jack-o-lanterns.
Halloween One, it was kind of coming out of a moldy pumpkin
and reestablishing the title.
Halloween kills was the town of Haddonfield and all the various faces
and Haddonfield coming through as different jack-o-lantern expressions.
And then this one, it's what's emerging from one pumpkin to the next
and various characters there, and then this last one,
which was just kind of an abstract idea I had
of, like, ripping open a pumpkin.
We're used to seeing pumpkin guts
and the innards that are disgusting and you reach into.
But what if there was almost a human inner body
within that last pumpkin that had no expression?
- And so... -lt's such a-- Yeah.
Which also ties into Laurie at the end
and kind of using the pumpkin guts and the insides of that
to be kind of what is thought to be the inside of her skull matter.
So, like, Jeremy bouncing off the floor
to the mom yelling, "Corey, what did you do?"
It's like shock and horror and terror
turns into bridging into the opening title sequence of adrenaline
and then the fun of, like, art and designing it with music and images.
But that's what this movie's all about.
It's art and it's stylized, so it's not just about violence or terror.
It's something beautiful.
Another thing that we work with in the editing room is these transitions,
some of which are conceived in the script stage.
But then inevitably we're moving scenes around
and trying something earlier or later.
But we're always trying to have some sort of either symmetry or juxtaposition
when we go from one scene to the next.
A lot of contrast and affinity.
This is always a conversation of like, how much retelling do we get into?
But one of the things we were talking about in postproduction--
There's not a lot of Michael Myers for a long time in this movie,
and we knew that risk that we were taking.
And so to be able to establish or remind the audience
what he's done, who he is, where he's come from--
Because not every viewer of this film is going to obsessively have watched
every chapter in this franchise.
Some people are new,
or some people watched the last one on their phone
two years ago or whatever it is.
So I wanted to have a little bit of a kickback into that
before we go into a long Michael Myers absence
and just get into some character building.
It was an accident.
In the years that followed, the people of Haddonfield
descended into a plague of grief, of blame...
When we shot that scene where I'm getting arrested,
you never called, "Action."
I just had-- A police officer just came up to me
and grabbed me and yanked me to the car
and it was genuinely jarring.
And then I got to do a really fun dance with Jesse the entire shoot,
where we didn't really talk.
We just bugged each other the entire time.
It was really fun. He's amazing.
I love him. So good.
David, the scene where they're in the car and they--
I asked Atilla this at the after-party of the premiere.
But is it kind of a nod to Snow Angels in a way?
I try not to nod to my own movies. I'm not sure what that...
I can't help but be affected by my own experience, I guess, sometimes.
I had a total PTSD moment when I was watching it. I was like, "Holy shit."
That was one of the most traumatizing parts of Snow Angels for rne.
I've not seen that movie in a long time, so maybe it's in there subconsciously.
One thing I wanted to point out is the woman that's hanging-- that hung herself
is Oscar's morn,
who has a moment in Halloween Kills
screaming when she sees her son, who died in our first film in 2018--
sees him in the morgue in Halloween Kills, and so this--
We tried to echo his costume.
It doesn't feel like too many people have noticed that
that is a continuing character that has, in her grief, committed suicide.
And some of that just trying to set up the world of Haddonfield
and its downward spiral since the events of 2018
and how Michael Myers has,
as Laurie said in the last chapter, not so obviously become supernatural,
but taken on more than just an earthly human form
as he's plagued the town with fear, paranoia, blame, all these things,
so we can have the backdrop of a darker entity in this town
beyond just the personification of Myers.
Oh, shit!
In the population of Haddonfield, I love the shitty characters.
Jeremy is kind of like Julian,
who's referred to, I think, in Kills as "that asshole kid from across the street."
All these little kids, they're really, you know, mischievous.
Although you can't help but love little Julian from 2018.
- I always thought he was cute. -I think he just pissed off the neighbors.
I don't know what he did, but he pissed off the neighbors somehow.
There's some backstory there.
So I'm not going.
The Willie the Kid character--
We had the idea of what we wanted to do in IG/ls,
and you'll see not only a radio tower in the background of some of the shots,
but flyers for advertising for the radio station in various locations.
But I wanted to have another--
You know, Hugo was talking about the negativity of the town,
but, like, there's also just this kind of conspiratorial voice
of kind of the collective mindset of madness of the town.
And so thinking that would be fun to have as a nod and a character
like in The Fog, in the radio station, in the John Carpenter film The Fog.
These things that have kind of these-- a beacon, of a tower, of a character.
Hold 0n a second, Shannon. Hey, Corey! You "re late!
Rick Moose. Look at that face.
Rick Moose.
Do you notice the chewing gum?
- Oh, yeah. -Did he have chewing gum--
He has chewing gum behind his ear. It's just incredible. This big, pink blob.
Like Hubba Bubba. Like a big chunk of chewing gum.
He was fun, and "Yo, Corey" became our mantra.
"Yo,
Often there's one quote that the crew picks up
that it's really fun to just repeat every day on set.
On this one, it was "Yo, Corey!"
It was also "Good boy."
- Good boy. -Good boy, yeah.
So he's got gum holding the pencil that kept slipping out of his ear.
He's got chewing gum back there holding it up.
So I'd like I'd like to know, was there a problem with the pencil
that was fixed with chewing gum?
He's just a sweaty man and so it would slip off,
and the one way that we could get it without taking a lot of time
is put some chewed-up bubble gum back there.
But it was also part of an effort of having Rick be a part of every department.
In that case, he was helping props by chewing the gum.
That's right.
Always helpful to have Rick Moose around.
Yeah, he also camera operated, he did sound, he boomed,
he camera operated, he propped, and he even AD'd a couple of times.
Did he call "Action," David?
- He did call "Action." -l'm sure.
You're under arrest.
For being the prettiest girl I know.
That's nice, Doug.
At the head of this scene, there's a billboard that has a Willie the Kid.
That was actually a postproduction effect when we got into our early test screenings
and people weren't tracking where this DJ came from.
In the production of it, there was a kind of provocative
Rabbit in Red Lounge billboard
that was a nod to the original Carpenter film,
which was more kind of arbitrary fan service.
And thought that could be some valuable real estate at setting up a character.
So we went back to our concept art when we were in the edit room
and then put that billboard in there to help spell it out a little bit more.
It's interesting. It's so layered.
Willie the Kid is layered throughout this entire thing.
And you also have to kind of establish his face
so that when you meet him later on with Allyson and Corey,
you aren't totally jarred.
You only hear him forever, then I thought, at least that face, when he shows up,
should be somewhat familiar.
And this is the scene that proves
that David Gordon Green should win an Oscar for casting shitty asshole kids.
A really fun ca--
I mean, I always have such great joy with casting young characters
and this was a fun one to be able to put this unlikely ensemble together
and take a lot of the tropes of '80s movie bullies,
but then put them in a marching band uniform and...
The four people least likely to hang out with each other and put 'em in a car.
But, like, for example, so the main dude, Terry-- Michael--
We get to set and he's a Staten Island kid-- he didn't grow up driving a car.
He didn't have a driver's license, didn't know how to drive a car.
But, in the script, he drove a car.
We get to set, he's like, "I can't drive a car."
And so we threw Stacy in the story
and kind of bullshitted a story to fudge through that one.
I needed him to drive the car so he could get the flat,
so his dad could smack him in the back of the head.
But then we just worked around it.
There are so many little things in this scene that are just so fun to watch.
Like when he calls my name
and the dribble of chocolate milk rolls down my face,
and then also when he comes up to me--
I think it was David that threw out the line,
"Chocolate milk, eh? I like milk too."
That's so funny.
"L like milk too" is one of my favorite lines.
You're that psycho babysitter.
- He killed that kid, didn't he? -Yep.
Killed a kid and too pussy to buy us some fucking beer?
And the song that's playing in the convertible when they're driving up
is the actor that's playing Billy, this guy Marteen, that's his music.
So it was fun to integrate his music into something they're playing as they pull up.
What the-- What the fuck?
Smashing the Chocolate Soldier beverage,
which is a drink that doesn't exist anymore,
but I grew up going to East Texas with my granddad
and drinking Chocolate Soldier.
Me, my dad and granddad going fishing, drinking that kind of peculiar beverage.
But I've got a fond nostalgia for it,
so we dusted off the IP and brought it back to life.
Would you look a2' this ? I mean, a psycho meets a fieak show.
Wow. This is a match made in heaven.
For reasons I'll never understand,
the first day I saw the Margo character on set,
I just really couldn't wait to see her get killed.
Something about the sweatpants and that hair-- "This would look so cool."
And I think in the trailer when I first saw the clip
of just her in that yellow sweater jacket, like, it's--
Yes, all you need is a little taste of it, but she's made for it.
Bullies are so much fun.
I remember watching The NeverEnding Story opening day
at the General Cinema Prestonwood in Dallas, Texas,
and then the second those bullies show up, you know, at some point--
Maybe 'cause it was in the trailer,
you know the luckdragon's about to thrash those dudes
and they're gonna be in that dumpster.
- Are you kidding? It looks great on you. -I'm sure it does, but I'm not going.
Margo brought-- I didn't realize how--
She brought so much warmth to the role though, which was really unexpected.
When I read it on the page, I just kind of read all of them as bullies,
and she's the most on Corey's side throughout the whole thing.
I was the most torn about her death, watching it.
This close-up right here of Allyson,
that's when we see how beautiful Allyson has become,
and Corey and her getting to have their own little Hollywood romantic--
like their own movie.
There's a few aspects of this where it's almost a separate movie.
I like that in the middle of a meet-cute, Corey pulls out a Slim Jim.
A Slim Jim.
Out of anxious, you know, whatever.
He figures the best way to avoid this eye contact is through a Slim Jim.
This was fun.
Just clean it up, and get a goddamn sterile kit.
And give him a tetanus shot.
I actually-- David sent me through some nurse boot camp.
So I got to go meet a lovely lady named Tiffany
at a clinic locally in Savannah,
and she walked me through how to clean wounds,
how to do tetanus shots, how to kind of do all the things--
- Did she come to set? -She did.
Yeah, she was watching--
David sent me to a mechanic shop
and I don't think I've ever felt more like an actor in my life
than when I was at a mechanic's shop in Savannah, Georgia.
They were like, "What do you want to do?" I was like, "I guess change a tire."
And the dude's facial expression was like,
"How do you not know how to change a tire?"
You've gotten to this point in your life--
That's why, secretly, I wanted you to learn how to change a tire, though.
But it was interesting, we shot the first--
The first of our Halloween trilogy, we shot in Charleston, South Carolina.
Carpenter obviously shot the first one in Pasadena, California.
Takes place in Haddonfield.
S0 we translated that to Charleston.
Then Wilmington, North Carolina for Halloween Kills
and Savannah, Georgia for Halloween Ends.
The hard thing about Savannah, one of my favorite cities in the world,
is there's Spanish moss everywhere and we're telling an Illinois story.
Not only that, there's no bridges 'cause it's underwater.
So we had to drive an hour and a half to find where our cave dwelling would happen
because there's no bridges in Savannah.
No, it can. It's got a kickstand.
'Cause it was "too tired."
Yeah.
This scene was a scene that we decided on adding to the film late.
We did it in pickups and I feel like it's one of my favorite scenes
between Allyson and Corey and kind of like lets them sink in
and solidify their relationship a bit before the craziness.
It was actually a Danny McBride idea.
Danny, one of our cowriters and executive producers on this,
was like, "What's a great way to endear yourself to a character quick?
It's a bad joke."
S0 the "why does a bicycle stand on its own?" kind of comes from the mind
of one of the funniest people in the world just knowing the value of humor,
even in its most attempted and vulnerable forms.
I love that, right away, Corey doesn't get it's a joke and he's like...
- That's my favorite part. -..."No, no, it does. It has a stand."
- Yeah. -Clearly they don't match up.
David--
I went to ADR 'cause I'm painfully Canadian.
I went to ADR, 'cause on that line I couldn't sound more Canadian.
But David was in love with the inflection of how I said it
and I was like, "But it sounds Canadian."
So it took me like a hundred tries in ADR
to try and get the inflection and not sound super-Canadian.
There are so many abstract accents from this, in this movie,
from Terry in Staten Island to Joan and wherever Joan's from.
And Ronald-- he's from Queens.
- Everybody's a little all over the place. -That's kind of the Midwest, in a way.
We can accept a Canadian into our strange vernacular here.
That makes you Want to rip off your shin' and show grief your fucking tits
and say, "You know what? Let's go."
The spaghetti that's on the milk makes me wanna vomit every time.
That's an example of another one of those transitions.
It's just like going from the splat to the spaghetti
and then the gnarliness of the milk,
which was, I think, Paul Logan, another one of our cowriters--
It was written by Danny McBride, Paul Logan, Chris Bernier and myself,
and I think the first draft was the marinara sauce
clinging to the glass of milk on Paul.
And I don't want to know what disturbing venue
that image came from in his mind,
but I'm sure from life experience.
One of the most memorable scenes from Gummo, the kid in the bathtub
-with spaghetti and milk. -Oh, yeah.
Well, maybe that is where it's from.
That's fun-- taking a bath, eating spaghetti.
I like that there's so many villains throughout cinema
that eat spaghetti.
So I thought it was such a fun choice to have Corey just eating spaghetti
at the start of the movie.
Do you remember when I wiped out?
- Andi, do you remember-- -How could I forget that?
It was right when you go around that bend.
And my favorite thing about watching that clip
-is I crash and I do a somersault... -We had two cameras going.
...and everything looks normal and we probably could have used it,
but your genuine reaction of being concerned for me was like...
I was praying they would put it in the movie somehow, but I don't know.
- Did you guys try to put it in? -We did try.
Just does a somersault and jumps up with this "ta-da" expression.
- It looked much too cool though. -It was too cool.
Yeah, it was a little too cool for this version of Corey.
If it was later, then maybe. But for nerdy boy Corey, it was a little...
We didn't necessarily shoot this film in chronological order,
but it was "in chunks" kind of chronological,
to the point where, after the first few weeks,
some of the crew were confused about what movie we were making,
'cause there was no Michael Myers.
And they literally thought,
"I think David is just squeezing in a little independent love story here."
I mean, I basically was on an independent love movie.
David's mumblecore movie he's so proud of.
Yeah, we really had a wonderful first few weeks
in the sense that we were just free of any kind of action
or special effects gags and stuff.
And the second half became a very different shoot.
But I remember the crew-- Most people didn't have the full script at that point.
People come up to me all the time to say,
"ls it stressful having to make a movie that appeals to all the Halloween fans?"
And you just think, no, it's amazing 'cause there's so many people--
You can't please everybody.
So you get approached by producers that say,
"Here's some incredible real estate. Now build your dream house."
And so, over three films, we've taken different risks
and taken different story paths and been able to do that three times,
which we should be so lucky in a lifetime to be able to have those opportunities,
that you have total creative freedom
in a world that is so meaningful to you from childhood
and the early days of my cinematic exposure,
just to be able to take these characters and play,
like when you're a kid playing with your Star Wars characters
or G.l. Joe, all the stuff I was doing as a kid,
trying to bring strange little narratives of someone else's characters to life.
And then here you really get to do it and flesh it out.
And my niece gave me a Rosetta Stone, and now I'm learning Japanese.
This is a scene that we played with quite a bit, through the edit,
where it would go.
And again, early on,
we knew we were dealing with a beast in our late arrival of Michael.
And there's one version of this scene which happens later,
one version that happens in different places.
But then this one gave us the air,
I felt was the strongest for the Allyson-Corey relationship
to be developing off-camera.
To think that this isn't just, "Let's meet.
Let's say, 'Hey.' Let's be cute. Let's go to a party."
But now I feel like anything could be happening right now
between the two of them-- this could be a day or it could be a week.
And let's focus on the other love story of this film,
of which I feel like there are many,
but let's see this kind of cute teenager scene of Frank and Laurie, in a way--
an awkward, romantic moment of possibilities and optimism
where we can see Laurie with that smile that we haven't seen in so long.
I like your face.
This is my favorite scene of Laurie Strode ever.
I fell in love with Will and Jamie in this scene.
It makes me so happy.
But it's a really beautiful point in the story.
I mean, she's kind of planted the seed of introducing you two,
and she's looking for love herself and also for her granddaughter.
It's really-- It's a whole different movie at this point.
In my imagination, the horrible things that people would post on social media--
In Haddonfield, there is no social media.
People just say it to them in person to their face.
That's interesting, yeah. They avoid that passive-aggressive world.
They go right up to them.
She cannot speak because of you! You her neighbor...
Do you want to talk about the casting of her?
You were there. You talk about it.
Well, I mean, it's just one of these beautiful things...
No, it's one of these beautiful things that we do.
We have this specialty casting friend, John Williams,
who purposefully seeks out people that aren't actors
and puts them in front of David in the prep period.
And this lady comes in and she just gave us something so raw and beautiful,
that I've never seen David cast someone on the spot before,
and he did, and she just broke down in tears
and was just so overwhelmed with emotion.
And it was a really poetic part of the casting and she did beautifully.
She did exactly what she did
in the audition, which is hard,
considering she's never been on a film set,
and now you've got a hundred people staring at you with two cameras.
I love it. And that was Jamie's first day on this movie,
and I just remember her just smiling at me and just saying,
"Here we go again. Let's do it."
Rolling up her sleeves.
Nick.
I know.
I feel like that's another one that it takes a minute
for people to recalibrate their brains and realize that that is Nick Castle,
but as the flasher in this movie.
It's such a beautiful cameo.
Okay. I'll be right there.
I'll be right back, okay? I'm gonna get us a drink.
I like--
This scarecrow mask is so empty,
but still so childish and just so off-putting.
Hey, scarecrow.
See anything you like?
So one of the things we did--
We were writing Halloween Kills and Halloween Ends simultaneously
when we knew we were gonna do two more movies,
and I had never met Kyle Richards when we were writing kills.
And then when we filmed Kills,
we had such a wonderful time working with her
and just found her so naturalistic and wonderful to work with
that then we had the time, since we had a pandemic,
and time to explore what we were going to do with Ends.
And so we found ways that we could invite her back to our set
and just hang out with her more, because she's so fun.
And thought it would be cool for Laurie to actually have evolved
from her babysitter-- or from a babysitter--
to her friend, and having those connections.
Just the growth, again, in that small town, that community,
but give her a little bit more of a joy and a substance to her social life.
This dance scene right here
will forever be one of the most special memories of my life.
The genius of Paul Logan-- I remember, with David, him asking,
"I want a dance and I kind of want it to look choreographed, but it can't be.
It's gotta be messy and weird and obscured."
Sure enough, I think the next day
Paul had this, like, 1980s punk rock ballet video
that was like a minute and a half--
- D0 you remember how long it was? -It was quite long.
But it tells an entire story of Allyson, start to finish.
-It's obviously interpretive dance. -lt's the whole movie, yeah.
But it's the entire movie, up until the end when Allyson's standing over him,
and it's such a beautiful moment of levity.
I mean, we had so much fun.
This is entirely choreographed from Paul's ideas to then Atilla,
who brought in our choreographer friend.
Yeah, Danica Selem.
Yeah, she came and she followed this blueprint
that Paul had written and physically demonstrated.
But it is-- If you were to hold on this, just in one take,
you'll literally see the meeting of these two people,
the fact that they're both in the mood for love,
and this wild, youthful love story that ensues.
And it's a metaphor of their entire relationship
all the way down to the tragic ending.
- Yeah, when she's holding my head. -Yeah.
Also, Atilla, I don't know if you remember,
but when we were doing coverage on the other side of the room
and the extras would leave, and I think it was--
I don't know who was rehearsing--
Or maybe it was when we were shooting Kyle's coverage through the dance.
All the extras weren't there.
So me and you were dancing for Kyle back and forth.
And there's a beautiful behind-the-scenes video from Dalia,
our on-set costumer,
of me and you prancing away together, alone.
But isn't there something so wonderful of just being so silly and free?
-It's so opening. -And there's an excuse for it, you know.
It kills me. Do you understand?
The juxtaposition between-- I mean, the freedom of the dance
and then walking into this, essentially, nightmare,
or this scenario with the mother of the kid you killed.
You have so many moments like that.
Even what you just saw with Laurie coming out of the store,
feeling kind of on a high after her conversation with Frank
and then getting berated.
It's, like, the juxtaposition, it takes you on such a ride
because you don't really know what to feel when,
and then you're just kind of feeling something new.
And you always just flip the script.
Corey!
Corey, watch out! Corey!
See, this is a classic movie moment
where everybody sees a cool Ford Bronco old truck,
and they're like, "I want it in my movie,"
and then you go to shoot the thing and the truck breaks down 15 times.
Oh, man.
And we're all sat there waiting for a truck.
Two actors in the moment, ready to roll, and then just the car is in the way.
- It was a cool car, man. It looks good. -Cool car.
- I blocked it out of my memory. -The bike, though, no problems.
Lessons learned, yeah.
There's just so many obstacles to these two finding love.
This was Rohan's audition scene, right?
Well, I had the fake sides that Paul Logan wrote.
This is what we read when you and I met.
That's interesting, Rohan, to talk about how this role for you came about.
Yeah, I got an audition. It was for--
I never asked you about this. What is The Maynard Defense Council?
- Is that a-- -I was watching the Gigglesnort' Hotel,
which is a show I liked as a kid,
and there's a crow named-- if I'm not mistaken, it's Maynard--
and then I was asked what a good fake title for this movie could be
while we're trying to do some preliminary casting.
And so I just pulled Maynard Defense Council.
I was showing the kids Gigglesnort Hotel. So if you haven't seen Gigglesnort' Hotel,
that's a perfect tangent to pitch the Bill Jackson masterpiece
of this show from Chicago--
late '70s, early '80s show.
Really good. Disturbing, magical.
Yeah.
The girl on the billboard is Laura Altmann,
who worked with us on the previous two films.
Yeah, she wasn't there to join us on this one,
but she was looking over us.
It's a beautiful cameo for her.
Where you going?
There you are, man. I've been looking for you.
- Terry. -I want to apologize, okay?
- Jesus Christ. -What do you say, Corey?
This is great. Our stunt double, Stanton Barrett,
does this throw for me over the bridge,
and it was into a bunch of cardboard boxes,
and all I was thinking was, "I could do that. Probably, maybe."
And then I watched him do it and I was like, "There's no way I'm doing that."
- Well, the throw is-- -That man is fearless.
It's three shots to throw you over the bridge there,
but we obscure it with some sneaky edits as characters are crossing.
- So it's... -Let's see if we can call it out.
Yeah, call out the three shots-- We tried to make it look like one.
And I think it works.
Oh, yeah.
You gonna murder us, same way you killed that kid?
Little psycho bitch.
You don't know what you're talking about!
What does Billy say after the plummet? Does anyone know?
-"Little dick busted it." -"Little dick busted it."
"Little dick busted it."
I'll give him the credit on that.
There's some good improv lines that pop up in this.
Pretty sure that was him.
- Billy. -He hates me, huh?
Okay, it's me...
Billy!
- Me... -So that we crossed-- That's a cut.
- Stanton. -And now, cut again.
So it's all on his back as Terry crosses twice.
It's such a good cut.
Little dick busted it.
And this is the second instance I'm thinking of
where it's, like, Corey accidentally pushing Jeremy off the flight of stairs,
and now other kids accidentally pushing Corey off a bridge.
And it's a significant transformation point in his character too.
- We killed a kid, man. -Come on.
'Cause what it leads him to.
Now, this is a fun little chantey.
Our friend, Joey Stephens, wrote this song
for our vagabond friend here to be singing.
And then we did a fun version of it that's kind of an embellished, epic version
that we were gonna play over the end credits.
It exists somewhere, but I ended up replacing that
to get some of the Boy Harsher cue and a John Carpenter cue in there.
But it's a fun one
that I wish we could figure out a way to spotlight it somewhere.
That was the song that--
I think I was in the car on my way to set and you sent me the lyrics and the track,
and said, "Can you just learn this real quick?"
Yeah, 'cause I was gonna have you sing it too.
And then we did sing it on the rooftop, right?
We did, yeah. It was the scene on the rooftop.
And I don't know if we told Andi,
but she was in the middle of doing a beautiful scene
and I just started singing.
And on take 1, I think you just looked at me really confused.
Went with it.
I feel like you're never confused when you're working with David Gordon Green.
You have no idea what he's about to drag to your other counterparts.
- You just kind of have to go with it. -Playful secrets.
There are so many scenes in this film
where I had no idea how they were going to be edited together,
because we gave so many different variations on the scene.
The rooftop being one that was entirely different than what it turned into.
This was fun because of the rats.
- Hugo, were you wrangling the rats? -No.
- I was far from that. -He was outside doing something better.
I remember the one moment that got me where I couldn't hold it together
is when, you know, rats make that little...
Well, it turns out that if they do it in your ear,
-it's the craziest tickle in the world. -Oh, no.
And I couldn't keep it together.
'Cause I remember David just kept saying, "I need the rats closer to his head."
Eventually he just goes, "Well, just put it on his head."
They plopped a rat on my head
and I'm keeping it together, trying not to laugh,
and then it just shoved its little rat nose so deep in my eardrum.
I have to say, those are the most behaved rodents I've ever worked with.
- They were very nice. -They were Larrys.
There's four Larrys or something? They named all four of them the same name.
There you go.
And when I asked why, the lady said, "Well, they're rats.
They're hard to tell apart."
Good point.
Okay, I have to try to calm down and relax, what I'm about to say,
but this is my favorite part of the movie.
And 'W's The Labyrinth--
And to not sound pretentious, but Borges. You know? It's like--
And if anyone's seen this 1970 movie Performance by Donald Cammell.
And this, it's like you don't know what's happening,
but you know there's some kind of a synthesis of identity.
And it's, like, Shape and Corey.
And this vortex, this graphic image right here with the leitmotif--
This music in the theater, so beautiful. It's just pure style.
I was in the editing room the day that you guys were sound designing that.
And we evolved that and played with that a lot.
And how much story do you want to tell? How much do you need?
How much music do you need to emphasize that?
When I got the first track from John Carpenter
and Cody and Daniel Davies, it just rocked.
And you just have that electric guitar taking it to that other level
that it says so much.
But, you know, that's a ZO-second chunk of movie
that there's a lot going on.
And so, how thick or thin do you make it?
And we played with every imaginable layer in there.
And again, at a point, you're just like, "All right, movie's done.
It's coming out in three weeks."
I say you go back.
You go back in there, and you get me that mask.
I like the eye shot where you can see Michael in my eye.
That's something we did on pickups as well. So that came in later.
David would put his hands around my neck and sort of throw my head around
when they were recording my eye shot.
There's a great photo Jamie Lee actually posted--
and she posted pretty recently-- of David doing that to you.
- There's a series of a couple of them. -Look at the background.
Like, you see Haddonfield in a more wide form than in previous iterations.
Like, you see that there's a McDonald's and that there's places like--
Those are questions, and when we found--
This is a little town called Sylvania in Georgia,
and when we found this location it would just--
What was the restaurant across the street? Yummy's or something?
Yummy House was a different location. This is Huddle House was here.
Oh, yeah.
Joan. Let's talk a little bit about Joan and her...
The inspiration of a movie called Butcher, Baker, Nightmare Maker,
which is something that Susan Tyrrell,
who was just an incredible actress that has now passed,
but was in this movie that--
That was one of the first movies I watched off your list.
We had that phone call about, like, Munchausen by proxy with parents.
We went off on that.
So it's just trying to find, yeah,
inspirations to share with the crew and the cast
that kind of help beyond the script,
thinking, what's our tone here and when does--
When is Halloween gospel
and when can we separate ourself from what we've established?
When can we try something new?
When do we go to camp? When do we go to grotesque?
Even Deb and her bug eyes there, like, there's a pinch of comedy
that we've never dealt with in the Halloween movies,
and Michele Dawson, that actress, just gave us this very realistic,
lifelike opportunity there to find something different,
a little bit new flavor that wasn't quite satirical,
but opened up a sense of-- I don't know, a smile toward the comedy.
People create their own stories, and make their own choices.
They believe what they want to believe.
I'm hopeful with perspective that my experience will help others heal.
You have to ask yourself, "Am I in control,
or do the elements control me?
Life or death?
Suicide...
or cherry blossoms?"
This scene here, out the window, is such a fun nod.
But also when I sort of jump out behind Laurie,
my eyes are looking all crazy.
We had-- The contacts were scratched,
and I couldn't see through that whole scene.
And I remember being terrified about how that scene turned out.
I brought it up with you, David, and you were like, "No, it works. It's great."
Yeah, you're crying the whole scene.
I have no problem with your eyes itching you right now. Just leave me alone.
Let's roll.
But it's great, you know, and this being the third film
that we had the great privilege of working with Jamie Lee Curtis on,
just to be able to see both her commitment, dedication
and enthusiasm every day, bringing a scene like this,
where there's subtlety in her reactions, but there's a lot of story in her eyes
of what her intuition is starting to pick up on, and it's great.
And on and off set, very often we'll say, "What would Laurie do?"
and reach out to Jamie about ways that we could play it,
and she's the first person to say she'll try anything.
She's just so fearless.
And so it's an incredible opportunity working with someone like that,
that's that open, that comes to set early with ideas,
with support for the cast and crew
and really owns this character in a way where, as she puts it,
her identity has kind of blurred with Laurie Strode in a way that, you know,
she's really proud of.
One of the most bittersweet aspects of concluding this franchise
is that that we don't get to party with Laurie Strode anymore.
She needs us, we need her.
I killed someone.
Such a sad moment.
This is our first scene together that we shot.
It was our first scene together, and there was--
We had done the scene, like, three or four times
and then David came over and whispered something in my ear.
He said, "Once you get off camera I want you to just scream
as loud as you can."
And I remember right before I screamed, David,
I noticed the boom mic was right over my head
and I had an ethical dilemma of whether to commit or not.
And I screamed and it was the weirdest take,
but there was something so cool about just screaming off camera.
Well, I assume, you know, Chris Gebert, our production sound mixer--
He's the only person that's worked on all--
I think this is film number 15 for me,
and he's the only one that's worked on every movie of mine.
So I've done my best to preserve his ears through his own artistry and engineering.
So, yeah, I sensed that ethical dilemma.
I've been been in that place many times myself.
I just wanted it to be a fun night.
Chris Gebert was the first person I met on the Halloween crew.
I met him at the Stronger premiere,
where you told him that I was going to be in the Halloween movie
before I was even offered the thing
-and I almost pooped my pants. -That's the funniest thing.
- Have I ever told you that story? -No.
So, I knew Andi was--
I was doing press and gonna release the movie--
that Jake Gyllenhaal movie, Stronger
And so we're doing a premiere and a screening in New York,
and I invited Andi, knowing that I was going to cast her in the movie,
but not having told her that.
So she shows up and then I'm introducing her to Chris Gebert,
and I say, "This is Andi,
who's gonna be playing Allyson in Halloween."
And then he walked away.
And then he just walked away and left Chris and I to talk and I'm like...
"I guess I'm..."
Oh, my God.
He did something similar on Zoom when he was casting me.
It was one of those things where nobody was communicating with my team at all
and it was just Zoom calls with David and Andi.
It was kind of just hanging out. You'd just call-- "So what'd you think?"
Then we'd just chat about stuff.
And then eventually I think he was like, "So, yeah, you just come--
you want to jump on board, you can do that."
He, like, said it so casually.
And then Andi looked at me and she was, like, "Are you excited?"
And I was like, "What just happened? I don't know-- What is happening?"
Yeah, it was so strange.
I love your understated approach to casting people, personally.
Oh, man, it's so much fun.
I believe we had a code word of if you were crazy or not,
and if we signed off on it, it was like--
- What was the code word? -I don't remember.
It was something that you would never say in a normal conversation.
How many times did you say it?
- Three? -I think three.
So in this blossoming romance
I think there's also a choice they're confronted with based on morality.
And going back to, like, when Laurie Strode is in the driveway
and Corey comes up to her and he says
he got these injuries from defending himself.
He's kind of like-- seems to have been holding it against Laurie Strode
that by doing what's right,
which is, you know, resisting bullies and standing up for yourself
and, you know, maintaining your integrity--
if what it got him is getting his butt kicked,
then he is kind of guilt-tripping her in a passive-aggressive way.
And then after that I started to think, like,
"Has every family member of Laurie Strode and citizen in Haddonfield, at some point,
guilt-tripped her about something?"
Everyone's targeted her and blamed her for just trying to do the right thing.
That's why, Hugo, I love you talking about this,
'cause I went over the script, like, obviously a bunch of times
'cause there was, like, a year delay to shooting due to COVID.
So I had an extra long time looking at it.
What's fun about prepping your characters is you get to dive into, like,
what they believe in and what their ethics are and stuff.
And there's, like, four different versions of Corey
that we used all through shooting.
There's the version of Corey where he knows he's lying,
and he knows he's manipulating everybody,
and he's a total sociopath, so to speak.
There's the version of Corey where he's just the sweetest boy in the world,
getting influenced in the wrong direction.
And then again, when the movie came out, it was like,
what if this movie is through the perspective of the radio host
and all that stuff?
You can watch this movie so many different ways.
I love hearing what you're saying about the different characters of Corey,
'cause it feels like he's in the middle of a tug of war
between Laurie and The Shape,
and so is this relationship and the fate of the relationship.
And it's, like, it was started with such good intentions by Laurie,
but then it gets poisoned and corrupted,
and then it ends up unfortunately becoming something really dark,
where in a parallel world it could be like a True Romance type duo.
And we wanted to make sure that their relationship
wasn't Ubermanipulated by Corey.
So there was a lot of conversation of kind of
Allyson being like a version of kryptonite for him and you have--
That's why it's so interesting seeing scenes like this,
because you're watching him kind of go back and forth
and toggle between being clean and clear with Allyson
and then having one foot in this other darkness.
This nighttime Krautrock, motorcycle driving--
This is when I started to process, like, the moral choice he has to make--
the darkness and how there's something pleasurable
and that draws him to that.
I lump everything together when it's a movie
when it's, like, drugs or crime or any immoral act.
And when it comes to like, you know,
sex or violence or any of those morally transgressive acts,
I think there's sexy and there's depraved, and sometimes there's overlap,
but right now I think this is the, "Hey, being bad is sexy."
And Mulaney being, like, the last guy Allyson dated,
it's, like, obviously saying something about control and the law
and her being like, "I don't want that anymore."
How far do I want to follow this guy on this dark path, as Laurie Strode calls it.
One of the interesting things of having an outside character come into this world
is that Halloween One and Two,
all the kills are really sadistic, random and super violent-- senselessly.
But in this film, I mean, aside from the self-defense
and the first kill of our homeless friend,
every kill here is passionate and personal, in a way,
unlike the others.
Rohan always joked that he was on a romance-vengeance movie
where all of his kills are out of passion.
But they are. I think you can point to them--
They're sloppy and they're not stealth.
They're sloppy and they're passionate and they're-- In his own...
They're justified.
In his broken sense of justice, they're justified, yeah.
I have to be careful when people ask me about Corey and his behavior
'cause I suddenly start defending him-- "Like, what do you mean?"
- Corey's the most romantic-- -I do too.
He's the sweetest, sweetest good boy ever.
But there's one thing I really wanted to lean into,
and maybe this is 'cause in high school I was obsessed with the series Twin Peaks,
but the bad boys and leather jackets and motorcycles and--
Every opportunity we had there
to scratch that River's Edge itch, that Twin Peaks type of tone,
I thought was a fun and applicable evolution
of this community of Haddonfield and the characters that we could meet.
From a technical standpoint,
this is another conversation the editor and I have a lot is, like,
two kind of jump scares right back-to-back
is just a real challenge when you get into how to structure them.
Like, do you underplay one and overplay the other, or--
You don't really have the time to recover from one
before you jump right into the other.
So that was an interesting lesson that I didn't think about in the script stage
until we get to this in the editing room.
Then you're thinking, "How do we pace that out?"
A perfect example of something, if I had production to do over again,
I might have spread it a little bit differently.
And if anybody watched Halloween kills,
there's a young trick-or-treater in our flashback section
that says, "Don't fuck with the Mulaneys."
And then this is, in a very distant ancestral path,
this Doug character is somehow related to those-- those misfits.
I'm gonna fuck your face up, you little shit.
- How did this come to be, David? -What?
Like, the face.
This part of the movie makes me scream every time.
Richard Wright is our production designer on these three films,
and he put faces about at Michael's height in various--
subtle suggestions of a face at about Michael's height
in various points in the wall,
that if we wanted to play some games--
And then that one was just my favorite, because Michael could actually be hiding.
The flashlight could point to something
that the audience looks at the first time they see it,
and then anybody that notices a boogeyman lurking in the shadows,
he's there too.
Show me how to do it.
And going back to, like, transgressive moral acts,
I think there's something almost, like, fetishistic or a little kinky
when Corey says, like, "I want you to show me how to do it."
I mean, whatever it is, it's like you cruise it
and then you learn what it feels like
and then you're like, "Okay, how do I get more?"
This score.
Yeah, and then this is the big ask of the movie, is like,
can we wait this long to see Michael energize?
And I think it's a perfect thing of, like,
if you're buying a ticket because you need to see Michael and Laurie,
then it's gonna take a while for that to kick in.
If you're watching what I'm hoping
is a part of the Carpenter-inspired vernacular
of characters in a community...
Here we go.
- As he's-- You said something-- Andi-- -Energizing.
Yeah, he's like--
- He's powering up. -He's powering up.
Or as Paul Logan says, he's--
- He's going to his happy place. -He's going to his happy place.
There is so--
Corey is having a love affair with everybody in this movie--
-with Laurie, Michael, and with Allyson. -Yeah.
Somebody sent me a photo of--
Right after this scene, it goes into the-- Never mind. That's later in the movie.
It's after the Nurse Deb and Dr. Mathis kill,
and it cuts to us on the motorcycle.
Somebody sent me a photo and they put Michael's face on you,
on the back of the motorcycle.
It was like me and Michael driving away after this murder.
It's me.
Oh, my God. Are you okay?
I don't know what's happening to me.
This is a fun one, Andi, we should talk about, is--
So this scene--
In the script and in production, this became a sex scene,
and it never once occurred to me or anybody else on set
the reality of the fact that he's just murdered people in a sewer with Michael
and he's coming out of this moldy, mildew-infested--
I love that that's what people strike issue with.
- And when we showed-- -Not cutting off tongues or anything.
Exactly, it's not the violence of the movie.
But when I showed it to the first audience--
It wasn't a big one, but I got an extended friends and family screening together
and, like, they're having sewer sex and everybody's like--
- So we're like, "They can't fuck here." -Yeah.
Yeah, let's not--
The one specific moment would--
'Cause I think I put my finger in your-- you chew on my--
- In my mouth. -Yeah. Yeah.
And then the idea that I crawled through this disgusting area
and you just chew on my hand and you're, like, not grossed out.
- Yeah. -And you definitely wouldn't smell great.
- But whatever. Stinky sex works. -But it immediately--
Yeah, it was like--
It's one of those things that until you're watching your movie with an audience,
there's so many things that you think work and then they don't,
or you think there's no way they'll buy this and then they do.
There's just-- It's so valuable to just
watch it through the perspective of people, for the first time,
that don't bring any of the baggage of the script
or the production or expectation.
Well, certainly they have expectations of these movies, but--
But yeah, that was one I was like,
"Duh, you idiot. Like, God, they're filthy."
lt just comes right after, so it was a little tough to sell.
We should have just had a shower scene. It would have all been good.
I was hoping you would just cut away to me washing my hands in the sink.
CRB.
Yeah, taking a bubble bath. Something.
It just cuts to a shot of Joan cleaning Corey in the bathroom.
That would have been great. Mom giving you a bath.
That would have been very on-brand.
I know, right? I know I talk too much.
I just get so excited about all that boogeyman bullshit.
The connection between the two of them though is quite important to see.
So the way the scene was reworked, it does still kind of work and hold that.
Well, I think taking his hand and leading him upstairs
is at least a graphic homage to the opening of the Carpenter film.
Says it all and then, "Hey, guess what? You woke up in bed.
We've seen that before. We know what happened. Some naughty business."
I think they just fell asleep, man.
- They talked all night. -They snuggled, shared some secrets.
That's what Andi said to me. She's like, "Can you believe they talked all night?"
- Naked, but they talked all night. -Yeah.
I always liked Corey.
Some kids, you can tell they're a pain in the ass.
Jack Marshall, this is an actor--
So I did a Planters peanuts campaign a few years ago, commercial campaign,
with Bill Hader as Mr. Peanut,
and we did this great stop-motion animation on these things.
And so having this fun commercial campaign and I met--
We filmed 'em in Austin. I met this actor, Jack Marshall.
And, you know, it was kind of a comedic commercial. Mr. Peanut, whatever.
And when we were casting this, I couldn't find anyone
that could nail this monologue and sound like a human being.
And then, thankfully,
the casting director that we used on that commercial
was also the casting director that does our--
As Atilla was talking about, John Williams and Karmen Leech,
who do our alternative casting in the movie.
So we reached out to Jack and literally the first--
After we'd seen dozens and dozens of people try to hit this monologue,
which could be so either boring or sentimental or whatever,
ljust wanted a human being to say these words.
And so we sent it to Jack and I was like, "Remember me from Mr. Peanut?"
And nailed it, first audition tape he sent in.
I was like, "Yeah, that's our guy. Let's bring him in."
I don't know, man.
The hairs on the back of my neck stood up.
Right then I felt like I got my answer.
The kid who used to mow our lawn didn't kill my son.
It's fun thinking about, like--
I do a good number of commercials between movies and things like that,
and some people look at it for extra money, extra exercise,
but I just think, you never know who you're gonna meet,
from the technical construct to the creative.
I can't tell you how many times
it's evolved into someone I work with in the feature form.
You just laugh at all my jokes, don't you?
The music choice here, David...
Rob Galbraith? Yeah.
Play "Tell Me With Your Eyes," by Rob Galbraith.
One of the things about the previous two films
is that I feel like everybody that dies, you're bummed,
especially in 2018, because David's done such a good job
of making the characters really interesting and likable
and it's not like your typical horror movies
where everyone's kind of a dick and then you are happy when they're dead.
The first time we really see that is in this film here,
where we are able to kind of have these characters
that are, on the surface, not super nice,
but still you're able to kind of infuse moments like this.
Like this scene, I was like, "Oh, my God, these two are in love."
And then it made me feel pretty bad
when they were getting their asses handed to them by Corey and Michael.
Are they in love'?
- They are. -There was a conversation--
What's the power dynamic in that relationship?
I mean, he still calls her Dr. Mathis.
Yeah. Yeah.
- When he tells her to go take a shower... -Yeah, yeah.
This is their first night.
I felt the entire audience go...
Yeah, okay, so we know he's got this fuck pad,
and we know he's got this lecherous aspect and then the music.
But that moment to me, when I hear him say that,
it's what you fill in the blanks as an audience member,
me thinking, like, "Okay, well, this-- Wow, this guy has a lot of sex."
- That he finishes her sentence-- -Yes, but then go out--
N0, guys.
See, I feel that way as well.
And then when he's outside setting up the firepit right here,
and he's, like, trying to make sure everything looks perfect,
I'm like, this is an insecure guy.
The question is more fascinating than the answer.
Everybody's trying to find love and opportunity.
But this is their first night together. She's never been there before.
And the first thing he says is, "Yeah, go clean up."
He's not a gentleman, but...
No.
What if he thought that was the right thing to say, though?
You gotta empathize a little more.
Maybe that's his go-to, you know, love line.
He asks a lot of questions, as does this movie.
I think all the Halloween movies ask a lot of questions,
and I'm not afraid of that.
Actually, that's one thing I really love about the interaction that we get to have
with the fan base of this movie is,
everybody talks, everybody's got ideas and opinions
and you give anybody the keys to this Ferrari
and everybody's gonna go a different direction with the things that they love,
the things that they want to avoid, what you should, what you shouldn't do.
Ultimately, one of the things I've assessed
is that people love the Halloween movies.
The ones they love the most, they saw between the ages of 11 and 16
and so those are their favorites.
So, kids are watching this movie, which is crazy,
'cause I've got 11-year-old twin boys, and they're not watching this thing.
Give them a couple years.
But you find that excitement is triggered in that really vulnerable,
absorbent, excitable youth--
the music you love, the movies you love.
It's when there's so much going on chemically and emotionally
inside you, I think, that there's something cool.
So I love talking to people about what their favorite Halloween movies are,
their favorite moments.
And so often it is that period of their life
that they saw something that maybe they weren't supposed to see
and so it had a provocative taboo that they were drawn to or whatnot.
But I think it's fascinating to see the inner child come out
in the conversations about the most recent movies even.
This is the first time I ever had, like, a nightmare after set
is when Chris Nelson made a mold of Dr. Mathis's head
and we did takes and takes of me stabbing it with a corkscrew.
He's so good at his job
that it's so visceral when you're doing it.
I remember going home and waking up in the middle of the night.
I was like, "What's going on with me?"
It's a weird thing you say that,
'cause I haven't had a bad dream since I started writing Halloween movies.
I feel like everything that was--
I've used these movies to be able to exorcise my demons
in a way that, like, it feels really cathartic.
Like, I think that I so often, in life and through my career,
have held in so much negativity or frustration or fear
or these things that just plague all of us
in some, you know, human form,
and this has just been able to exhibit it in a weird, superhuman way.
But also we spent so much time breaking down every aspect of these effects
and these action gags, etcetera,
that it just becomes less horrific when you're shooting it.
Literally, we just ask for ketchup. We never call it blood even.
We just say like, "Squirt some more ketchup. A little less. A little more."
And we stare at these things so close on and forever
that, yeah, it loses its potency, I guess.
Andi, I think this was the fake sides.
I think this is what the fake sides were pulled from.
Really? I thought it was the diner scene. I thought your fake sides were the diner.
- Wasn't there a scene in the diner? -It may have been both.
I talk about, like, meeting you
in middle school or whatever and, like, being on thin ice
and, like, going back to my childhood.
I feel like Paul Logan might have scratched it.
So he did. So when we were casting " The Maynard Defense Counsel,"
or Cave Dweller, as it evolved and then became this--
But it is, like-- Paul would come up with something similar
that hit the emotional triggers we needed
to kind of suss out who was gonna inhabit the role of Corey.
It was fun to be able to explore that
and then hand you real sides and then we do rehearsal and evolve it from there.
I don't know that there was a Monday morning or a Sunday evening
that you weren't handed new sides for the week,
because I would just be so inspired by the week's work
and mess around with ideas that weekend with Paul and Chris and Danny.
It was just so fun to be able to watch these characters come to life
and take them beyond what we'd originally conceived.
This scene spiraled, when we were filming, into so many different arenas,
and I had no idea--
I'm surprised we even got the dialogue that we did in this scene during one take,
because what it morphed into was essentially
just like a silent film of these two people
kind of connecting, looking at this thing
and having a lot of-- like a moment with the hand.
It was also a very stressful set. I mean, it was, I think, only ten of us.
There was only 3O people allowed on the roof at one time.
Less than that for weight purposes, and we're just elevated without--
Yeah, we had to curtail ourselves to a certain region of it too.
And then me and my harness just swinging off the side of the building,
hanging there, swinging back and forth.
You have a video of that, don't you, Atilla?
- Yeah. -I was dancing in the air for you.
You said, "Dance," and I danced for you.
This is another example of when I did a commercial
with King Keraun for a Madden game--
Actually, it was my first pandemic job.
I did a commercial for Madden. He was in it, playing the sports player.
It was cool, just him walking around and talking, poolside.
We just really hit it off, and then wrote this role for him.
And once Willie get in your ear,
it's like your favorite song stuck in your head.
So like, at the radio station when Corey-- He doesn't jump off the roof.
But to me, it's, again, someone falling from a great height.
But with him, he turns it into, like, playful
and, like, joking about, "I could kill myself,"
and it turns him into looking at that as something fun and being liberated.
But also, going with the '50s bad boy, it's also kind of like the rock star,
the "live fast, die young, leave a beautiful corpse."
He doesn't care about anything except just having fun, enjoying his young life,
and no risk is too great for him.
That exchange between him and Laurie is so loaded.
It's great.
David, you want to talk about this scene?
It might be my favorite scene.
No, I love the scene, but this is the scene you're always just like,
"What's the audience gonna say? Are they on it?"
I mean, 'cause it's 100% sad and strange and funny.
Like, to me-- You know what I like about it?
In a 60-second scene, it's everything I like about a movie in one scene.
I like a passionate and sincere line
said in a way that makes me laugh
and also feels true.
The tone is so preposterous, yet sad and angry.
And, I don't know, I just love all the complications
that are happening in there between funny and sad, and-- Yeah.
What did you think about kissing her on the lips? That was fun too.
It was awesome, man. I mean, I think, yeah--
Again, Joanne is just one of those actresses-- up for anything.
"What do you want to do?" She's just great at improv.
Typically a comedic actress, and here, just to get that spit and that anger
and then that obsessive love that she has for her son, that protective--
It's protection to the point of obsession.
She doesn't want you to leave this house.
She doesn't want a woman to walk into your life and take you away from her.
When she's talking to Laurie earlier--
"I don't like it that he stays up all night with girls."
There is the evil that exists as an external force
that threatens the well-being of the tribe.
Survival depends on understanding,
and awareness and fear of physical threat to our daily lives.
The other kind of evil lives inside us, like a sickness...
S0 in this scene-- At the end, I think we see Laurie Strode have kind of like a--
I don't know if you'd call it a teleport, shape-shifting, appearing-disappearing,
but it makes me think there is this ambiguity
of an affinity between Michael Myers and herself.
Atilla, weren't you saying something about a Greek tragedy aspect?
But I think that's where, morally, it's not black and white.
Both Laurie and Michael Myers,
there's a human aspect to them and their trajectory.
It's becoming who they are.
It's never clear about someone being, you know, entirely responsible.
But Corey being confronted here,
I think he's still having a chance to where she's giving him a chance
to where he could go either way,
even though she knows he's going down this dark path.
Yes, in the Greek tragedy mythology,
you have the gods always interfering with the mortal's life.
And here, we are constantly seeing Laurie trying to manipulate it
in contrast to where Myers is taking it.
This was another scene that I watched in the theater
that I thought how fun it is to believe that--
When you see that she's gone at the end, "What if she was never there?"
What if it's just Corey stood in the house talking to himself,
and he's feeding himself the narrative of Laurie's controlling whatever it is?
- Oh, yeah. I love that. -That's cool.
You know, 'cause of his obsession with Allyson.
You should give in.
You should surrender to that feeling you had
the first time you ever looked into his eyes.
And then at the end of this scene, David had me smash a piano with a--
- What would you call it? A fire-- -A fire poker, yeah.
Fire poker, yeah.
Yeah, that was-- The sparks were flying.
That was a cool little shot.
That's a great transition as well to the--
What does it cut to when you hit the piano?
Motorcycle wheel? Yeah.
'Cause the chair would have been down if Laurie was actually in it when leaving.
I know. That's right. There's so many things in this movie.
When I watched it last night, I was like,
"This could be a Fight Club-esque movie if you want it to be."
Like, if you choose to watch it that way, it goes a different place.
Do you remember when David showed you how to hit the piano?
- Love that cut. -Match cut. The sound.
- Yeah. -Such a good cut.
What's wrong?
We need to leave.
I can't right now. I'm working.
This phone call was weird.
David locked me in a room in the doctor's office
and just made me mumble into a microphone,
and he was like, "I want you to sound as weird as--"
Yeah, I could barely understand a word he was saying.
You know-- But I love phone distortion.
And I think in this one I was channeling Black Christmas.
Yeah, it brought me back to Black Christmas.
It's just so haunting hearing the voice through the phone.
And when I watched Black Christmas, my idea of doing that phone call
was just filling my mouth with saliva and trying to talk through my saliva.
And let's be clear-- the original Black Christmas.
This is one of my favorite sequences in the film.
This is a weird example of, "Okay, we've got three hours to film a fight scene.
How do we possibly--"
You know, when you're losing time and just, like,
"Oh, shit, this is where we are. How do we do it?"
And so, it really was the effort of the amazing stunt team,
and just lock the camera down, not film it traditionally,
and just have it scrappy.
- I love this. -I love that it's--
- I didn't realize that that's why. -Yeah.
I love that Corey doesn't go in and just overpower him.
He gets the upper hand by accident for one second,
and that's when he gets his chance to grab the mask and get out of there.
But I remember when I lifted up...
When I lifted up James and I--
'Cause he had to sort of jump with me, and I think we went a little too high,
and when he hit the ground, I heard his spine rearrange.
We recorded that sound, yes.
- Yeah, and his entire spine... -That was scary.
...cracked from top to bottom, and I swear to God--
I don't know where that take exists,
but you can see me get off of him because I thought I had paralyzed Shape.
Yeah, I thought he was just gonna recharge and grab you by the neck
and then I was gonna see what happened for real.
Are we gonna take this thing to the next level?
Did you find what you were looking for?
I imagine you're going on a wonderful trip.
It's so interesting to have--
This movie is so difficult to make, with so many logistics.
I mean, if it's not makeup, it's special effects.
You're trying to do this or that, or a vehicle that breaks down,
or a moment of--
Like, it's just really, in a fun way,
refreshing to have a scene with two people in a room talking,
and you look at your day, you look at your call sheet
and you're just, like, a sigh of relief--
two people I love in a room
and we're just gonna exercise
what we're in this business to do in the first place,
is tell a story, bring characters to life,
fold a little laundry and then get the fuck out of there.
It was just so nice to be able to have something
that isn't burdened with every aspect of logistics.
It's just two wonderful characters and seeing where they take the scene.
You pretend like you moved on, but it's bullshit.
It was important to us to not do what, you know, we did in 2018,
which was just kind of gaslight her and tell her that she's crazy
and that she's wrong and all these things.
It was really important to us to find a different way into it.
And kind of what you see and what we landed on is, like,
even if she does know that Laurie's right, she just doesn't give a fuck.
Yeah.
That's one of my favorite cuts.
- You did such a beautiful job, Andi. -I love that.
I love that cut. Thank you.
Just being able to put little psychological cuts in there
rather than technically smooth cuts.
She puts her hand to her forehead,
and then immediately she's in a different position.
So it's kind of fun to be able to, again, credit Tim Alverson
for finding some of these ways to tell the story in a different way.
And sometimes a jarring cinema language is cool.
The cat that jumps up on the sofa was just a cat that lived at the junkyard.
And I got so much love and companionship out of that cat on set.
Relax. You had it from everybody.
Like fucking Corey,
fucking Laurie, fucking Allyson, fucking Michael, fucking the cat.
It's just all a big Rohan love story, the whole movie.
- Good lord. -No, but it's true.
When we would move on from some gruesome moment,
we would leave Rohan and we'd move on and we'd be preoccupied.
So in those quiet moments when we weren't paying attention to him,
he had this cat.
You make it sound like I was falling to pieces that nobody was looking at me.
I mean, you went through a lot on this. Come on.
He did.
Grab that chain. Let's go.
Terry, there's somebody in the office.
Stop being a chickenshit'. Run I! through the wheel.
All right, tie it to the back of the car.
Then we'll drag it till there's nothing left.
Dusty-ass bike.
Shit.
- Let's go, Billy. Billy! -Terry, hurry up. Someone's here.
Billy!
Come on, Billy! Let's get this punk!
Let's g0!
Oh, my God. Billy!
Billy, what are you trying to do, man? Suck your own--
0h, my God!
What the fuck?
Terry? What's wrong?
Billy's dead!
- What? Wha-- -What are you talking about?
Oh, shit!
Stacy?
What's happening?
Damn it!
Stacy!
Help me!
So look at that.
This was, like, three full overnights of sculpting together
to get that sequence going.
Yeah, that's one of the few scenes that's really storyboarded.
And I'm not a night person, but when we got that limited time
and we're trying to accomplish so much
in terms of all these logistics coming together at once--
Yeah, it's pretty mapped out,
and Atilla and the AD team run a tight ship and it's pulled off very nicely.
No, but everyone cross-departmentally-- I mean, it looks so effortless,
but just the simplest thing of when you're just lighting the scene,
someone has to be in that mesh of the fence,
and just the claustrophobic nature of what that is, just one tiny element,
is so difficult to endure.
I mean, this whole sequence has multiple things happening at the same time.
It's everything.
It's stunts, special effects, stunt drivers, stunt performers,
guns, weapons, armor, all at once.
I'm just trying to turn that character of Ronald into an action hero.
'Cause he was just watching an action movie.
He was very happy when he saw this film. He said, "I fell really well."
There he is!
Corey?
I got you!
This is lovely. There I am.
- Boom. -Yeah.
What did I do, Atilla? Did I just jump on the ground--
I feel like I just pancaked. I feel like I just laid on the ground.
Yes, you did.
You exactly pancaked. 'Cause we did some trickery there.
S0 all you had to do is, I think, pancake and then crawl back a bit.
I love the trickery when it's a real, practical, in-camera disappearing act.
-It's so much more fun. -I love that.
And it's the same thing with the shot where I'm behind Laurie
when I show up at her house and I jump out.
- We just somehow managed to hide me. -Yeah.
It's so much fun to do that.
I remember they were so worried about me doing this,
putting a blowtorch in the dummy's mouth, for my safety,
and I remember looking at David and going,
"There's no way I don't blowtorch this dummy, David. I have to do this."
You know what we did? We added a dental drill
to the sound effect of that, so it sounds so much more horrific.
'Cause all of us have PTSD with dental drills.
As a viewer, just when I think I'm desensitized...
Yeah.
I can't think of another kill as recent in any of these movies--
That blowtorch is gnarly.
I have to credit the sound team on this.
Rich and Paul and our sound design team is awesome at just having a good time
and coming up with character,
and sometimes they go to some pretty far-out places
to make some of these really effective.
The blowtorch is what I read in the script where I was like,
"This is the thing I'm the most excited to see in this one."
Now, we're gonna eat it.
That looks good.
David, you have to tell the fun story of this reaction.
Of this reaction? Oh!
So we aren't using the kill.
The kill will be on a supplemental feature on the DVD, but we're not using the kill.
Is that what you mean? ls that what you're talking about?
Yeah, the song, man.
Getting her reaction in that moment was fun to just be able to--
Why don't you talk about it? You tell it.
Well, because you were shooting in slow motion,
it becomes tricky trying to get prolonged reactions.
'Cause obviously it's slowed down, you see more,
and some stuff is abstract and some stuff is more clear.
Soto get her to move her mouth in a fun way, you had her sing...
-"Barbara Ann." -. . ."Barbara Ann."
And so, I'm upstairs shooting the scene where I'm transforming in the mirror.
I'm washing my hands, and all I can hear from downstairs is "Barbara Ann."
And it went on for about ten minutes and I couldn't figure out what was happening.
Can I help you?
Wait, but this is another one, too, right?
Didn't you have them dancing in the background? When really they're--
They were like, "He's supposed to be the murderer."
Diana Prince, who I met--
I was on the Joe Bob Briggs show, The Last Drive-in,
and I met Diana, who's the sidekick on that show.
We ended up talking about Halloween lll and our love for Season of the Witch.
And then I asked her to come be in this movie.
And it was fun too. We had a really good time.
But I wanted her murder to be a dance.
And then this I never thought would actually be in the movie.
When we were doing that, it was like, there's no way-- even--
There was no way we were gonna have something that--
This is so good.
But this was just happening. This was not planned.
It was just happening. I don't even know where it goes.
It's just in bad taste.
And it's a different movie, but somehow we just kept it in.
And when we would take it out, we would be sad, so we'd put it back in.
There was a lot of Shape work on that day,
where we had stunts doing Shape stuff for me
while I was on the roof doing a movie with Andi.
- There was a lot going on that day. -Yeah.
It's just part of that whole thing where, you know, Blumhouse,
they give us a certain amount of time,
but what happens is they give us the freedom to do it,
but we have to achieve it all within the given time.
So it leads to a lot of multiple camera, running around from set to set and, yeah...
- I mean, it is a circus sometimes. -lt's insane.
That's a perfect day of, like, "There's so much happening in one place."
There were three units up that day.
That's the open of the movie. You remember, David?
I was shooting three different cameras, three different floors of the house--
Yeah, we were just running up and down stairs, getting exercise,
just trying to set one camera, leapfrogging here to there.
That's when it was the biggest gift I think you guys ever gave me
to getting into this movie.
'Cause sometimes you show up on a set
and it's all slow and this big, you know, emotional entry into this thing,
and you guys were like, "All right, we're rolling on three floors."
Grabbed you from the car, cameras already rolling, threw you in,
somebody just last-looked you, you know, superficially,
and then, yeah, that was it.
And then cut to the end of the day, you're like--
We finish one scene downstairs, then you go upstairs to another camera
and you're roaming around the attic,
and that was pretty much how it went for the rest of the movie, I think.
And then I blinked and it was three days later,
and we had an open to a movie, and it was cool.
Yeah.
It is strange to think how successful these movies have been financially,
but the model hasn't really changed.
And I think if the model was to change,
if you were to make a big-budget version of these movies,
I think it would lose some of the charm of the grittiness, the rawness
that I think Carpenter and Debra Hill and that 1978 crew
kind of inspired our methodology.
And it is the constraints that are probably equally as rewarding.
And they also result in creative ways to get out of things.
We were talking about, how do you do that big fight with Corey and The Shape,
seeing it through the tunnel?
That was born from,
"Okay, we have three hours to do this. What is that version?"
And it ends up being much more unique.
There's a benefit to having those limitations.
Otherwise we get a bit carried away with ourselves, I think.
I remember this sequence, when we were writing it,
I was on a conference call with Paul Logan and Chris Bernier,
and this was a point we're trying to figure out.
And we were literally three writers on this sequence
trying to do "Choose Your Own Adventure."
Where do we go from here? And here we are, blah, blah, blah.
And I remember I had an idea.
I was at a water park with my kids
and then I had to step away from the water park.
Called them up, they both answered the phone, I was like,
"Let's spitball this idea."
And so, I'm just pacing around,
watching water slides and frolicking children everywhere,
and then there's this idea of this fake suicide.
And we just ended up talking through it and then everybody went away that night
and wrote their version of it.
And so then we get back together the next day
and we talked through what we all learned from those explorations.
And it's really fun when you have collaborators and cowriters
that have that sense of adventure.
"Here's where we are. Here's the idea. Here's the seed. Now let's dance."
Up until-- I feel like once Corey enters,
there were so many different iterations of this ending,
and we would get a different version of it almost weekly up until shooting.
Yeah, it was on the front porch for a while.
I had a little Night of the Hunter nod with her awaiting.
There's one with Allyson coming in and being part of--
- Corey was still alive. That one. -Yeah. Yeah.
There was a lot that was played with.
The shape of that room, and sometimes under certain lighting,
I feel like Laurie Strode's office, it's like she lives in a little pumpkin.
- Like she lives in a pumpkin? -It looks like a little pumpkin.
- It does look like a little pumpkin. -The lady who lived in a pumpkin.
That's kind of fun.
This gets the biggest cheers in theaters. It makes me so happy.
There's your fourth fall, Hugo.
Yeah, that's exactly right. And this is the last one.
This is, by the way, the source of my future balding right here.
- She's got a good grip. -Yeah.
So cool. She's so cool.
These are funny conversations.
After you've made the movie, delivered it, and then get into the marketing of movies
and you start talking to the studios, like, "What's gonna go on the trailer?"
It's such an education, 'cause it's outside of my expertise of,
"How do you get people to see the movie?"
And then, inevitably, you think these trailer moments
that are embedded in the film.
And then what are you going to show the audience to anticipate the movie,
or what are you gonna show them that's gonna spoil the movie?
And how you're going to reallocate some line or some moment
that's elsewhere in the movie to tell a different story-- it's really fun.
And I met the editor of the trailer at the premiere party and talked to him.
Actually, I told him this. I said, "Before the next movie,
I want to sit down and talk to you about what you're looking for."
'Cause he watches every daily.
Everything we're filming, he watches all that footage.
And it's so fascinating to think that there's this whole other department,
this whole other art form that takes what we're doing here
and the performance art of all this, and then tries to do something
to service a different aspect of the promotion of the movie.
What did you do?
A lot of what I think about when I watch this in theaters
is how the on-location location when you're on the outside of the door
is separate from the inside, which we shot at the studio.
And I just remember thinking you did such a great job
of carrying it over to the on-location stuff
that was shot on a completely different day.
But more importantly, we shot it before as well.
- I know. -Yeah, yeah.
Yeah.
The screams.
And then in one take, Jamie screamed back at rne,
and that's when you're reminded
that I will forever be a scream princess, not a scream queen.
I love when Allyson comes home and then Laurie Strode has a knife,
and at her feet is a guy with the Michael Myers mask she just killed,
and "lt's not what it looks like."
Yeah, no, I kept saying, "lt just needs to be out of frame.
You can pretend like Allyson doesn't see it."
But that whole sequence is really fun to watch from when--
'Cause I feel like Corey's death comes out of nowhere.
People lose their minds when they see that.
And then you can literally watch--
You can hear the audience piecing together what the hell is about to happen
because then Allyson comes in,
you see that they're starting to piece together it looks like Laurie did it,
and it's just so much fun, that whole sequence,
hearing the reaction of people.
There's ideas of, "Do you see Allyson come in?"
But Mike Simmonds, who's our cinematographer on these movies,
he's more than just a guy that sets up a camera
and tells lighting where to put the lights.
He's a guy that's thinking about story, so he comes to the editing room
and gives us a cinematographer's storytelling of these sequences.
And so, it's really fun.
Tim and I will sit there and hear his ideas and be inspired by his ideas
of not actually seeing you come in, but see--
The look on Laurie's face of seeing you come in is more interesting.
And so it's always--
You know, from the very first drafts of the script,
we're getting Mike to read them out loud
and hear his visualization of the storytelling,
and then to follow that through the editing room is pretty exciting.
This is Jim taking revenge for that body slam you gave him.
- Yeah, exactly. -Yeah.
Ever since that body slam, anytime Jim had to put his hands on me,
I was so nervous.
I have to say, the funniest thing that ever happened
on any of the three of these sets was this next shot of Jim
when he's wearing the mask in this hallway right here,
and then I'm looking at it through the monitor as we're rolling,
and then I noticed that he's chewing gum.
It's like, "ls Shape chewing gum back there?" And then he's like, "Sorry."
And he just reaches up through his mouth and pulls down--
No, I think he just stuck it in the inside of the mask.
And Chris Nelson probably has to find all sorts of weird things in there.
Every time I see a bloody knife, I think of our wonderful on-set prop, Cindy Mah.
Okay, this part right here, for any movie nerds like myself,
this is what I would most freak out on.
One day, Gebert--
I guess I overheard Jamie asking for a metronome,
and so Gebert pulled up a sound file and then to The Shape's footsteps,
so that same metronome matches the Venetian-- that cord exactly.
And, you know, narratively, it gets taken further,
but I love how, technically, it was so mapped out and specific.
That was fun. And this whole sequence was Kevin Scott and Cory DeMeyers
and Ashley and Airon Armstrong
putting together this awesome choreography for what this fight was gonna be,
and taking what's on the page, really rehearsing it, playing with it.
Then bringing Jim and Jamie in and saying, "How do we make this feel
not just like a kitchen brawl,
but this, like, dramatic, almost intimate, kind of passionate fight?"
And bring as much expression and emotion as they had.
That's Jamie's head taking a smash to the glass there. Doing it for real.
I was very reluctant to allow her to do that,
but she was adamant and she kicked a lot of ass in this sequence.
'Cause she was really adamant about making the choreography and the design of it
really suit her and not be a stunt-centric battle.
So she was very involved with the creation of this choreography.
I spent a lot of time with Jim Courtney right before a take,
just to review what we're about to do.
But I'd say to him sometimes, "Why are you doing this?
Why are you killing people? What's the matter with you?"
And he says, "Till, when The Shape kills, it's his way of making love."
Sounds like a Jim Jude Courtney line.
Says, "Yeah, I'm just making love to them in the only way I know."
So Corey, he starts off as a normal person,
but The Shape, he was always The Shape.
When I watch Shape kill,
there's no-- morally, I don't have a problem, 'cause he's not human.
There's that disavow, that separation.
And in this end, I kind of feel sorry. I don't want The Shape to die.
Hugo, what are you doing on a day when we're all jammed in a kitchen like this?
Where are you? What's yourjob on a day like this?
On this set, I'm on the back porch of Laurie's house the whole time.
That was my area. That's where I locked up.
And so I'd always try to pop in to do stuff real quick and go back out.
The cast was back there and I would help Tess out.
Everybody would hang out at that back porch.
Where was I this day? Was there another unit going on?
Yes.
Well, it depends which part.
We attacked this scene with two different units
over the space of two weeks.
So there were times that were together with you
while they were doing pickups of this.
Yeah, they'd do insert shots and we'd leave those with second unit.
It would be funny. We're on a set.
On one screen, we're focused on the love story that we're shooting,
and then on the other screen we're seeing what they're doing on the other set.
We're seeing a skillet hammer a knife into a... Yeah.
I think we were doing the rooftop scene,
and I was looking at the monitor in between takes,
and it was, like, a guy getting his tongue cut out,
and then on the other screen was these two canoodling on the roof.
I was like, "What are they doing?"
I also say, for both of you guys, there's not many days
where you wouldn't come visit set even if your characters
-weren't involved in that scene. -I was on set, I think, every day.
I just love that kind of camaraderie that happens on these movies
and I hope that carries forward in all the movies.
It's, like, these casts that are not just invested in each other,
but they enjoy each other and they're curious about what's going on
when there's certainly an empty hotel room and tranquility on one side of the town.
But we could go and squirt more ketchup and roll up our sleeves
and play in the blood and guts on the other side of town.
I like going on location scouts.
You should come. We're gonna do some more.
I forgot, when you all say "ketchup," it reminds me of the Godard quote.
It's like, "There's no blood in movies, there's just red."
- Nice. -Wow. I like that.
Hugo, so you think he's not human?
- Is that what you're saying? -Yeah.
I think that because when he was born,
The Shape is a predator who kills, and he's pure id.
He never developed other aspects of an identity,
and he's like an animal, obviously.
And through the franchise, there's been instances
of depicting those aspects of his character.
Do it.
Maybe since we've wrapped this film, until now,
we've just been so much in the Exorcistworld,
I can't help but just get into the possession aspect of it.
Maybe it's blurring, you know? Like, especially how it's passed to Corey.
I just see it as a possession more than a supernatural being.
That's just amazing.
I'm not gonna let this happen to you.
I mean, they're all animals. We're all animals.
But I love hearing theories like that and these movies are just a way
that people can take something that they're passionate about
and have discussions about it.
Chris Nelson, another shout-out to you, man.
You're an artist.
And he really just enriches all of these things, these aspects of it.
With Shape, I like that it's-- I'm not ever gonna look for a clear definition,
but it's, like, just the little things that we do hear and we do know.
Hawkins says The Shape doesn't use guns.
Like, we know that about him and other things about--
He follows Laurie Strode.
And in the 2018 Halloween, we see he won't kill a baby.
You know, so he's an animal,
but it's kind of like he has his own reasoning for killing,
and he has boundaries, but we don't have to ever know what they are.
It's more mysterious. It works better that way.
Speaking of showing up on days you're not supposed to be there,
I showed up for Will Patton on location to lay on the ground for him,
because I'm so in love with Will Patton-- he's my favorite.
We didn't see you, but at least people felt you and stepped on you.
But I thought he told you to get out of there.
He did. N0, I think he told--
I was trying to not tell that story from now on, you know.
Self preservation.
There's a great behind-the-scenes video, which I hope makes it to the DVD release,
where Andrew Epstein, our behind-the-scenes orchestrator--
- What would you-- -Producer?
Genius.
He comes up to me, I'm on the ground, and he goes, "What are you doing here?"
I said, "I'm a massive fan of Will Patton.
I just wanna do a scene with him more than anything."
And we do three takes where Will runs in, he sees my body, reacts and runs past,
and then I forget who it was-- one of the ADs, the PAs came up and said,
"Hey, Will is just asking if you could leave."
Even as I lie.
And then Epstein comes over,
I'm sat in the corner of the room looking all sad and long-faced,
and he goes, "What happened?" I said, "Well, Will asked me to leave the scene."
Yeah, he's asked me to leave a few times.
It's fun, and Will is also my neighbor.
David was like, "Why aren't you laying there?"
And I was like, "I'm not going to repeat myself. I was asked to leave."
He didn't want to step on you. He was being a gentleman. He's sweet.
So this sequence-- There's Omar.
We spent five months working on this film, blood, sweat and tears.
Omar comes for 24 hours and gets all the big laughs and the big cheers.
You know what? So, the woman outside of the grocery store--
In our original script, the woman outside the grocery store
was the wife of Sheriff Barker.
And then Omar was in production on something and couldn't--
There was some sort of COVID outbreak and he couldn't make it away to come be--
'Cause he was gonna be the one in the wheelchair,
and he was the one that was gonna be traumatized after the events of 2018,
and then he couldn't show up.
So we had to scramble and come up with-- that's when we met our new friend
and brought Diva back from the dead, or so we thought,
after her fluorescent light bulb extravaganza in Halloween Kills.
Shooting this was incredibly surreal.
I'm Gen X, and so during the '90s, during grunge,
I'd go to a lot of shows and crowd surfing.
So does anyone know, when you're there, how to initiate crowd surfing?
- How do you initiate crowd surfing? -lt's loud, so you can't hear.
So you go up to whoever's next to you, you lock your palms and fingers together
and you just present your palms to them, which is a stirrup,
and you kind of do a little nudge-nudge-- "Can you accommodate this?"
And then you use their palms as a stirrup, and you launch yourself and--
- So you did this? -Yeah.
- What bands would you crowd-surf? -I mean, they're all obscure.
'Cause I was into punk rock way before I ever saw big stuff.
- Like who? -I love Voodoo Glow Skulls.
Riverside, California, Mexican ska-core, like really fast punk.
That was my first show I went to and stage-dived and crowd-surfed.
- Nice. -I got a little more pretentious
when I moved to Portland and got into, like, the post-grunge,
like Sleater-Kinney and Quasi.
David, do you remember, we had one chance at this?
- One shot. -And we all got together.
- I sat on your lap and we all held hands. -I have a great photo.
Yeah, it was a family photo.
- Yeah. -Yeah.
I have a great photo of you two and Rohan being David's emotional support.
Yeah, I was very nervous,
'cause we didn't know what that grinder was gonna do.
And we had one dummy built, and it was very expensive.
And what are you gonna do?
And magically, at 4:00 in the morning, it works.
I love that the head just explodes like a watermelon.
It was the last shot. The last shot of the whole thing, I think.
Yeah, I think so. I think so.
I wonder if the DVD is gonna show, like, the alternate ideas that you had for that.
'Cause that wasn't the original concept of how Michael Myers passes.
It's just kind of reordering.
I mean, we filmed, like, with the crematorium ending.
We tried to experiment with some things.
This scene was also entirely different when we shot it.
Yeah, this scene was--
When we were filming it, it was very inspired
by the very ending scene in The Last Picture Show,
evolved, and then we moved it earlier.
- Such a great movie. -Yeah, we reorganized,
I'd say, the last four minutes of this movie quite a bit,
just trying to figure out what the right tone and order,
the right amount of, like, optimism versus melancholy
and where we wanna leave Laurie in her own mindset.
So this was one that intuitively felt correct
after exploration and test screenings
and playing with it and scratching our heads on it.
The final version of this movie, we never screened.
We just kind of looked at each other-- Did the same thing on Kills.
Just to the point where all of us, our collaborators,
just look at each other and think, "Feels right, right?"
And we nod and smile and then that's the movie.
So, David, can you talk about the vegetables improv with Will Patton?
Yeah, he-- Sugar Snaps.
That was a Eastbound & Down reference that he didn't get and didn't care for.
I don't think he's ever gotten any of your references in the last three films.
That's what was so funny about him asking me to leave that scene,
is he just seemed so, like-- I don't know, like, he never, you know--
Like, he gets the joke, but he's like, "I'm hereto work."
Yeah, but top-ten most playful actors I've ever worked with.
- He's amazing. -I love it.
This is such a tender moment
that didn't exist in the original script, I don't think.
Also, how romantic to deliver vegetables to somebody. You know?
They were trying to think of something that's not sentimental, but then they--
She did throw him a can of beans earlier and say, you know,
-"Stop eating them croquettes." -The meats.
- Yeah. -Croquettes. Croquettes.
And then this is, of course, an homage and tableaux
to the ending of the original '78 film,
but where there was once breathing in continuation,
now there's silence.
But with a curious mask and a familiar song.
And, to me, it recalls the same song, Muzak version,
when Hawkins and Laurie are in the grocery store, right?
Yeah, you know, 'cause this is a song that everyone that is born on Earth knows.
If you're two days old, you know Blue Oyster Cult.
But it's a song that plays in the original film,
and I was trying to think of something that wasn't just--
'Cause if you cut to iconic thematic Halloween music,
it takes you somewhere else in your head of, like, trying to end the movie.
And I was trying to come up with music that suggested an ending of the movie,
and then going through the history of the Halloween movies,
that one was just one that's--
You know, it's a perfect road-trip song,
it's a perfect ending of a thoughtful day or beginning of a new day.
And that's what I wanted it to ask
as we're trying to wind down the tone of this movie.
And then this other song is an original song by Boy Harsher,
which is just a musical entity that I really love,
and reached out to them.
This is an expanded version of the song that they wrote for the motorcycle scene
that leads to the top of the radio tower
and we echo her beautiful voice in "Burn it Down."
And they wrote this song not even knowing
that we were gonna burn down the radio tower thematically,
which is just one of those things when you connect with artists
and you're just on this wavelength and...
Yeah, I didn't even know that. I was talking to them the other night.
That's really cool that they were able to cook it up and find that theme.
When you sent us this song, it was so surreal.
It felt like the first-- I mean, it was like a big moment
where I was like, "Oh, my God, I'm in a major motion picture,"
where other artists that have such a voice
are really collaborating on across all platforms, not just film.
And then of course we wanted to--
After this track rocks out a little bit, we go back to the land of tried-and-true
and the magic and brilliance of John Carpenter as we say our goodbyes.
And, yeah, maybe we say our goodbyes here.
Attila and Hugo and Andi and Rohan
and the hundreds of people that have helped us out over the three films
and the legacy of which we are now part of and proud to be a part of.
Pretty exciting and-- Bittersweet conclusion.
And that's all I have to say. Any final words from anybody?
Thank you for your ears, thank you for your company, and ciao for now.
Yeah, and thank you to the fans that have been there.
Yeah, it's just nice to have those conversations
and those inspirations from everyone.
Love or hate it, it's people that connect with this mythology,
and God bless 'em.
That was beautiful.
Love you, guys.-
- I love you. -The end.