Interviews
[Interview] Latest “Scream” Victim Talks Their Gory Death & When the Killer Will Be Revealed!
That’s right, Emma’s ex-boyfriend Will (Connor Weil, Sharknado) bit the bullet in the closing moments of last night’s episode of Scream. It was a particularly nasty death, as he was vertically sliced in half by a quarry chainsaw (or thresher, I’m still not quite sure). Of course, the camera cut away right before it made contact with his head, so we got to see poor Emma get splattered in his blood. Check out the interview below!
Connor Weil: Hey, what’s up?
Hey, not much Connor how are you?
CW: Good thank you.
So I got to watch the episode over the weekend. You died!
CW: (laughs) Yes I did! Did you like it? Did it translate well?
Yeah you know I think it really did. I know that since it’s on MTV we didn’t really get to see you die but poor Emma (Willa Fitzgerald) got splattered with all that blood. I felt so bad for her!
CW: Oh I know right? Poor Willa, just covered in blood.
Did you know you were going to die when you signed on to Scream?
CW: I actually found out later. Right before we started shooting episode 6. They called me and were like “so episode 6 ends with a cliffhanger where Will is dragged of into the darkness of the abandoned car dealership, but that’s not the end.” I was like “Okay sweet” and then they go “but it is the beginning of the end.” I was like “Ah, got it. Okay.” And from there it was working through the redemption of Will in episode 6, and then obviously as you saw me fighting for my life in episode 7 and then it just ends that way. It was such a fun, gross way to go.
It kind of sucks though because Emma and the gang spent the whole episode trying to save you, and they succeeded. But then you die the next day.
CW: (laughs) Yes. It’s so unfortunate. But I think that’s what we were excited about. It’s like “oh my gosh,” anything you watch is not necessarily what’s going to happen, you know? It keeps people on their toes.
Yeah, absolutely. Can you tell us what it was like filming the death scene?
CW: Of course. It was me duct-taped to a chair sitting in front of a huge thresher machine. The blade wasn’t spinning when I was sitting under it, but it was all my reaction shots. Then, of course, was the most fun part which was me standing off to the side watching Willa get blasted with fake blood. It was so great and she did so well with the reaction. It was amazing to see it in person.
I totally screen-grabbed her covered in blood because it’s just the perfect shot.
CW: It really is perfect.
Since Scream airs on MTV, the camera cuts away once the thresher(?) starts cutting you, so you didn’t have to make any prosthetics for your head or anything?
CW: Pretty much. I had the easy part. I just had to film all of the reaction shots which is such a deep, emotional place to get to but it was super fun with the camera setup and the walk-off. The blade going off was so intense. I just kept thinking “This is it! This is the end!” It was funny though because one moment you’re joking around on set and having fun, then you realize “Oh wait, we’re shooting my death scene. I’m about to die.”
I can only imagine! Well, obviously you’re very dead, but it has been announced that Bella Thorne will be returning to the series in flashbacks. If you can say, will you be returning as well?
CW: You’ll definitely see Will Belmont once more in a flashback or an “In Memoriam” thing. It’s going to be nice and simple.
Do you know who the killer is?
CW: Yes. Since we’ve finished the season we all know who the killer is. The audience will find out who the killer is but it’s going to be a transition into season 2.
Well, I would say congrats on the renewal, but I guess you won’t really be there to enjoy it.
CW: You know, I’ll take it. Thank you!
What do you think Will’s death is going to do for Emma as a character? How will she react to your death?
CW: I think this is going to be one that’s really going to mess with her. The killer is smart, you know? I was killed in broad daylight. It’s crazy stuff, but it’s really going to mess with her. I think the town is going to realize how serious this guy is. It’s definitely going to be a wake-up call.
Well you are the first major character that has been killed off since Riley in episode 3, but you’re “the boyfriend,” so a little bit more prominent of a character.
CW: Right.
Do you have any projects you are working on right now?
CW: I’m actually going to be shooting a film in the horror genre. It’s coming up pretty soon and will be released some time next year. It’s called Fog City and it will be about a group of teenagers stuck in a house after the local factory has had an explosion that lets out this gas that fills the city. So we’re trapped in this house and emotions run high, to say the least. So I’m staying in the horror genre for a minute.
Yeah I’ve seen you in a couple of things but what I really remembered you from was Sharknado, of all things.
CW: Of course!
Do you like acting in the horror genre?
CW: I do. It’s a newfound love, actually. I’m a baby so before shooting Scream I wasn’t really able to handle a lot of horror stuff. I get scared way too easily but when I started shooting Scream I was able to see the fun in the nuance-y horror. The smart, really twisty-turny type stuff, which is what Scream is. So now I’m a newfound horror fan after having so much fun on the shoot. I’m definitely enjoying it.
Good I’m really glad for that. Well thank you Connor for taking the time out of your day to speak with me. I really appreciate it.
CW: Of course thank you for the interview. They were great questions.
Any time at all! And of course, good luck in your future endeavors.
CW: Thank you so much I really appreciate that too.
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Don’t forget to catch up on the first seven episodes of Scream on MTV.com (or just watch them live at 10/9c every Tuesday night on MTV). You can catch up on my episode reviews here as well. I did notice in my review of last week’s episode that someone in the comments mentioned liking the soundtrack. Well, you’re in luck! Scream‘s soundtrack will be released on Friday August 14, which you can preorder here. MTV released the following information regarding the news:
“MTV and Dimension TV have partnered with Columbia records for its first ever musical soundtrack for the hit series, Scream. Assembling the best and the brightest new Columbia recording artists including 2015 MTV VMA nominee George Ezra, Phoebe Ryan, Liz Wet, MSMR and more. MTV.com will have the exclusive live stream of the full album including three unreleased tracks available on Monday, August 10 and the full album will be released everywhere on Friday, August 14.”
MTV also sent over a trailer for the final three episodes of the season:
Interviews
‘Rubberhead’ Director Nick Taylor on FX Maverick Steve Johnson, Practical Effects, and Seven-Year Journey
Horror journalist, producer, and podcast host Nick Taylor moves into the director’s seat for his feature debut with illuminating documentary Rubberhead: The Life & Monsters of Steve Johnson.
It chronicles the wild life and career of SFX maverick Steve Johnson, based on the multi-volume book series Rubberhead: Sex, Drugs and Special FX, and those familiar likely already know Rubberhead isn’t your standard horror documentary.
Johnson is responsible for so many memorable movie monsters, having worked on Fright Night, Poltergeist II, An American Werewolf in London, A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master and Night of the Demons, to name a few. He’s also extremely candid in ways that feel atypical in this industry, open about his failures as much as his successes.
“It was a natural progression for sure,” Nick Taylor tells Bloody Disgusting of his transition into filmmaking ahead of Rubberhead‘s world premiere next week at the Fantasia Film Festival on July 23. “I think with my podcast, I got adept at interviewing people and pulling creative lessons out of them, which was the point of my podcast. I wanted this movie to be sort of a creativity pill for artists where if they’re starting a project or feel creatively stuck, they could watch this movie and be inspired and get actual practical creative lessons.”
Taylor’s background in PR and marketing also organically led him down this path.
He charts the course from book promo to documentary director: “But also Bloody Disgusting had a lot to do with this movie because in the very beginning when I first met Steve, I was helping him promote his book and I said, ‘Hey, I got a marketing background and a journalism background. Let me help you promote this book. I’ll just pitch stories from your life to the media, and we’ll see what happens.’ And John Squires wrote an article about Steve making Slimer under the influence of tons and tons of cocaine, and that went fairly viral.”
“For a week, it was story time with Steve,” Taylor continues. “He would tell me a story from his life, and every story was about a major movie, a major director, lots of drugs and alcohol and insanity. I would write them up, and I think John published about three or four of them. So huge shout out to John Squires because that was really great. So yeah, there were definitely a lot of outgrowths of my journalism background that definitely contributed to this movie.”
Rubberhead condenses the multi-book series into a cohesive feature film with a breezy runtime, sparking the obvious question as to how Taylor approached condensing Johnson’s life down to an under 2-hour documentary film.
“That was one of the more difficult parts of all of this, because we had enough for a series or an epically long six-hour fan documentary,” he answers. “But from day one, I did not want to make a fan documentary. I love them. They’re a lot of fun, but I did want the movie to stand on its own two feet as a character-driven portrait of an artist and a time period and a technology, that being practical effects. I did want to be objective. I didn’t want to make this too long. I wanted to make it re-watchable. So I think we just really had to focus on what the narratives were that we wanted to tell. So there were some basically almost cliché archetypical mythic narratives present in Steve’s life. We could have made this way longer, but we wanted to keep it short. But luckily that’s why you have special features.”
Johnson quickly proves to be an engaging subject thanks to his self-effacing wit and frank self-reflections; expect no shortage of stories about how drugs factored into the height of his career or the failures it wrought.
That rare quality was an asset for Rubberhead, Taylor confirms. “He does not shy away from anything about the drugs, the addiction, the bridges burned, the mistakes made, the lessons learned. He just is honest about all of it. He’s had a lot of time for reflection, and he’s done a lot of reflection, so he doesn’t shy away from any of it, which is huge because it’s very refreshing. I don’t think a lot of people are that way, at least in this industry from what I can see. So I think it was hugely beneficial. We wanted to lean into that, and we wanted to make this sort of a gonzo Hunter S. Thompson sort of wild tale through Steve’s overall life.“
Condensing his life into this doc was a slow and steady process for Taylor, too. “It’s been almost seven years. It’s been a labor of love. We’ve been as indie as it gets. We would shoot what we could when we could, and then we would edit when we could. Then after a while it all came together.”
In a way, making Rubberhead brings Taylor’s horror fandom full circle. It turns out that the very film that sparked his interest in the genre and practical effects also comes with an amusing Steve Johnson anecdote.
Taylor explains, “My gateway for sure was Beetlejuice. I saw that at a very young age; I think I was four or five. I felt somebody had shown me, my soul. I get a little emotional thinking about it. There was something about that movie that felt so strange and unusual, but also felt so familiar. It was spooky, but it was fun, and it was lighthearted, and it had humor, but it also had this macabre celebration to it that I just really got into as a kid. I felt somebody had shown me my own soul. And funny story, Steve got fired from Beetlejuice because Tim Burton gave him his hand-drawn designs and Steve’s like, ‘Oh my God, these look like kids did them. This is not what you want. I know what you want. I’m going to redesign these for you.’ And Tim Burton was like, ‘Yeah, no, you’re not.’ So yeah, funny story.”
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