Interviews
[SXSW Interview] Fede Alvarez Talks ‘Don’t Breathe’ and What’s Going On With ‘Evil Dead 2!’
Director Fede Alvarez (Evil Dead) blew audiences away at the 30th Annual SXSW Music, Film and Interactive Conferences and Festivals with his latest film Don’t Breathe (read my review), which was the festival’s first Midnighter. I was lucky enough to sit down with Alvarez and chat about the film (and maybe a little bit about Evil Dead as well). Check out what he had to say! You can also check out my interview with the films stars Dylan Minnette and Daniel Zovatto here.
Bloody Disgusting: Hi! Nice to meet you.
Fede Alvarez: Nice to meet you as well.
BD: First I just want to say that I loved the film, and I was very happy that I didn’t know anything about it going in.
FA: Thank you I’m glad you watched it! Yeah this was interesting. Nobody knew shit about this movie and you never know what people are going to expect. With this, my goal was that no one would expect anything.
BD I definitely think that’s the best way to watch the movie though. I feel like nowadays trailers spoil so many things that to go in blind is nearly impossible so this was a real treat. But moving on to the film itself: What made you want to write this as a follow-up to Evil Dead? What gave you the idea?
FA: It was just me and Rodo, my co-writer on Evil Dead and this one too. We’re friends and we were just driving from Comic-Con in San Diego back to Los Angeles just trying to think about what we were going to do next. We knew- we kind of imposed some rules based on our experience with Evil Dead.
1) We knew we didn’t want it to be a remake. We wanted to do something fresh and original and new.
2) Because we used so much blood on Evil Dead. It was so much about that, you know? It was for shock value. So we said “Okay, let’s do a movie with no blood.” That was our rule: to not make a bloody film.
3) Let’s make it about suspense. Evil Dead didn’t have a lot of room for suspense so we wanted to make this one all about suspense and not related to the supernatural at all. That was and still is the trend for thrillers and horror right now. It’s always supernatural. We can tell great stories in the world that are not supernatural. If you go back to classics like Psycho, there’s nothing supernatural in there. There’s definitely enough real scary stuff in the world to make a movie out of.
So that was definitely what we wanted to do.
BD: I mean slashers are my favorite sub-genre so I like the reality of the situation.
FA: Cool
BD: So I may be wrong, but I feel like I read an interview after Evil Dead with Jane Levy where someone asked her if she would do that again and she kind of skirted around the topic. You put her through the wringer on Evil Dead so it must have been tough on her. Did it take convincing on your part to get her back for this film because she gets put through the wringer again.
FA: She said yes right away. She had read the script as soon as it was done because we are good friends, but no one had made an offer to her yet. So I called her out of the blue one day and asked her if she wanted to make this movie and she was like “Fuck yeah, let’s do it!” But I think once she got on set and she started to realize what we were doing she asked herself ” Shit, why did I get myself into this mess again?” I think she did an amazing job though. I was watching her on the screen and I was so proud of her. She really delivers.
BD: Yeah she’s two for two with you. I watched her on Suburgatory when it was on and she’s definitely got range, what with being able to do comedy and horror so successfully.
FA: Yeah, definitely.
BD: So was this an easier shoot for you? Or was it more stressful?
FA: [hesitates] No shoot is easy and if it is then you’re probably making a shitty movie. Like when you watch Evil Dead and you see all of those effects you know that it’s not easy to do and it pays off in that way for the audience. Don’t Breathe had a lot of that too where it wasn’t an easy shoot at all. That doesn’t mean that it’s a negative experience or anything like that. Some of the best movies ever made were very hard to do and have nightmarish stories about how they made them but the audience doesn’t care. They want to see a good movie. That’s all they care about. I don’t mind making things even harder in order to give the audience a good experience.
BD: That’s good that you have your audience in mind when you’re making a movie. I feel like it can be easy to forget about them during production.
FA: You can’t make excuses when you’re making a movie. You can’t say “oh we didn’t have enough budget to do this” or “we couldn’t do this because we didn’t have time.” The audience doesn’t want to hear that. You get the shot. You get the moment. You want them to see something unique. Don’t Breathe definitely had many challenges though.
BD: I imagine one of those challenges was telling a story with so little dialogue. What did that script look like? Was it a really short script?
FA: No, it’s probably a 90-page script. It was always the idea that were were going to do something that was almost a completely silent film. It was ambitious though. At first we didn’t want to have any music, but changed our minds. And I think that Roque Baños did a great job with the score. It’s very simple with great moments here and there to hit you with tones but he never overdoes it. Wait, we were talking about the script weren’t we?
BD: Yes.
FA: Right. Well it was a proper script. Everything that you see in the movie was actually in the script. Most of the film’s beats are definitely in there.
BD: Did you have a lot of blocking instructions in the script? Or is that something you thought ahead and brought to the shoot?
FA: Before shooting we sat down at my house with our production designer Naaman Marshall, cinematographer Pedro Luque and costume designer Carlos Rosario and put a big map on the table and drew the house. We made it like a chess game and put the characters on the map and moved them around as we were reading the script to illustrate what we wanted to happen.
BD: So basically it was your version of storyboarding?
FA: Yes, exactly.
BD: I’m getting the cue to wrap up, and I have to ask that question you’re probably tired of answering.
FA: [Looks down] Oh, man. Don’t even start.
BD: Are there any plans for Evil Dead 2?
FA: [Laughs] There are no current plans. We’re not talking about it with Sam [Raimi] at all. Like I know right now it’s all about the show and everybody is very happy with that and that’s it.
BD: What’s next for you then?
FA: I don’t know.
BD: Nothing?
FA: I have no clue, man. There are probably things but I just finished this movie. Literally just finished it a few weeks ago and the way I work is I don’t pay attention to any other projects while I’m making a movie. I think I owe that to the audience to really give them the feeling that they’re being taken care of and that I really care about every moment in my film. That’s why I don’t start thinking about doing anything else until I’m done with what I’m working on. Now that we’re finished I’ll go back to Los Angeles and start thinking about what I’m going to do next.
BD: Good! Well again, I think it’s a great film and I’m really excited for people to see it.
FA: Thank you so much.
Check out Don’t Breathe when it hits theaters on August 26, 2016!
Interviews
“I Don’t See Retiring from This” – Joe Bob Briggs Talks New “Last Drive-In” Format and the Show’s Future [Interview]
Hey everybody, have you heard the news? Joe Bob is back in town!
The Last Drive-In with Joe Bob Briggs has returned for its sixth season on Shudder. While the show’s format has been slightly revised — adopting a new biweekly schedule with one film instead of a double feature — the beloved horror host’s approach is much the same.
“It didn’t really change anything,” Briggs tells Bloody Disgusting. “We were crowding all of our movies into 10 weeks once a year and then having specials, and we found that people would rather have more weeks. It’s actually more movies than we had before.
“And some of the people on the East coast fall asleep in the second movie,” he laughs. “It’s about a five-hour show when it’s a double feature because we talk so much. Also, it’s hard to get thematic double features every single time. So our specials are still double features, but our regular episodes are single features.”
The season kicked off last week with The Last Drive-In Live: A Tribute to Roger Corman, celebrating the legendary filmmaker’s first 70 years in Hollywood with a double feature of 1959’s A Bucket of Blood and 1983’s Deathstalker. The special was filmed live in front of a fervent audience of Briggs’ fan base — lovingly dubbed the Mutant Family — at Joe Bob’s Drive-In Jamboree in Las Vegas last October.
In addition to his usual hosting duties, Briggs conducted a career-spanning interview with Corman and his wife, fellow producer Julie Corman. They were also joined by one of Corman’s oldest friends and collaborators, Bruce Dern. In a heartfelt moment of mutual admiration, Briggs and Corman exchanged lifetime achievement awards on hubcaps.
“I’ve known Roger for about 35 years, so I’ve only known him for half of his career,” Briggs chuckles. In his long history of reviewing, interviewing, and talking about Corman and his legendary work, one emblematic encounter sticks out to Briggs.
“I remember the very first time I went to the Corman studio, which was a lumber yard on Venice Boulevard. He had a standing set for a spaceship control room, a standing set for a strip club, and I think he had one other one, and then he had all of his editing facilities there, but it was still a lumber yard. They had not really changed any of the buildings or anything.
“He’s showing me around the studio, and we were walking past a pile of debris, and I said, ‘Roger, is that the mutant from Forbidden World?’ It had just been thrown over in a corner. And he just said, ‘Yes, Joe Bob, I believe that is. He was apparently no longer needed.’ I said, ‘Roger, you gotta get with it! That stuff is worth money.’ But he was like, ‘When the movie’s over, the movie’s over.’ That was Roget to a T.”
At least part of Corman’s longevity can be attributed to his shrewd business practices and pragmatic approach to the industry, which has included working in every conceivable genre of cinema. “I couldn’t think of a single genre he has not made,” Briggs says.
“When we did this interview at the Jamboree, I said, ‘I’m gonna name the genre, and you tell me what you love about that genre,’ and every comment that he made involved money and box office performance,” he snickers. “None of it was involved with love of cinema, although I did get him to say that his favorite genre is a genre that he didn’t dabble in much other than his first movie [1954’s Highway Dragnet], and that was film noir.”
While the fourth annual Drive-In Jamboree is still in the planning stage, Briggs is delighted by the event’s continued success. “The Jamboree is something that we literally just threw together. We’ve had three of them now. It’s something where we just show up and try to come up with programming for each day.
“But I really think the Jamboree is more about the mutant family meeting the mutant family. It’s more about people who know each other online gathering and partying with each other in person. It’s not so much about what movies we have. I mean, we always have an anniversary movie, and we always have some special guests and everything, but it’s more about the gathering of the mutants. It’s fun from that point of view. They’re exhausting, I can tell you that.”
The zeal among Briggs’ audience has only grown over the years, from hosting Joe Bob’s Drive-In Theater on The Movie Channel from 1986 to 1996, to MonsterVision on TNT from 1996 to 2000, and The Last-Drive-In on Shudder since 2018. “I’m amazed, having been in the business for this many years, that I still have a show at this time, because they say you can’t repeat TV,” Briggs notes.
“Nobody wants to see old TV, and yet I’ve done the same show three times on three different networks, and every time I try to change it everyone says, ‘No, no, don’t change it! That’s the part we love.’ I always want to do something new, and I’m always told, ‘No, you’re the CEO of Coca Cola who went to New Coke.’ You can’t do that. People will revolt. So we’re still doing it.
“It’s one of the few shows that I know of that’s just sort of grown organically over, gosh, almost 40 years. We’ve just added elements to the show. We try things. If something doesn’t work, we throw it away. If something works, we do it forever!”
The mutant family will be happy to know that Briggs plans to continue hosting and writing about movies for as long as he’s able to. “I don’t see retiring from this or retiring from writing. I’m primarily a writer, and the good thing about writing is long after they don’t wanna see you on TV anymore you can still write.
“The difference today, though, is I was pretty much the only guy doing genre films when I started. Now, there are academics that do it. There are entire books written about Dario Argento and Tobe Hooper and even lesser names than those, and there are, of course, a massive number of websites, including your own, so that when something comes out today, there’s immediately a hundred reviews of it; whereas in 1982, I was sort of the only guy, because the movies were considered disposable trash. So I have been surpassed in my deep knowledge, because who can keep up with all that? It’s impossible!”
Diana Prince, who serves as Briggs’ co-host Darcy the Mail Girl and was instrumental in getting him back in the hosting chair, has been promoted to an associate producer this season. “She was sort of always the associate producer, but I guess they finally gave her the title,” Briggs explains.
“Diana Prince is in on all the decisions about programming. I always listen to Austin Jennings, the director, and Diana Prince, the mail girl, because they come from opposite ends of the spectrum in terms of what kind of movies they wanna watch, and we try to strike a balance between. You know, she’s not gonna vote for Possession, and he’s not gonna vote for Mountaintop Motel Massacre,” he chortles.
“They’re probably the principal advisors, as far as what we show. Of course, [Diana] has a lot of social media clout, and she’s extremely knowledgeable about pop culture. Wow! She has seen everything. She’s seen more than I’ve seen!”
While surprises are part of the fun of The Last Drive-In, Briggs previews some of what’s in store this season. “The place we normally live is the neglected ’80 slasher, and we still live there,” he assures. “But we’re gonna pay a lot more attention to the ’70s especially. I’ve always thought the ’70s are more interesting than the ’80s anyway. And we’re gonna pay attention to some really recent stuff.”
He teases, “We’re gonna bring back Joe Bob’s Summer School, which is something that we used to do at MonsterVision. And we may have a marathon. There’s a possibility of that. But I’ll be digging this new format of being on every other week between now and at least up to Labor Day.”
While Briggs’ hosting format hasn’t changed much across four decades, the world around him certainly has — and that’s why The Last Drive-In remains relevant. He points out, “In the era of streaming, where everything is menus and there are thousands and thousands and thousands of choices, we are that thing called a curator that can direct you to the fun places on the spectrum of streaming.
“Streaming is very confusing for people, and a lot of people don’t like it for that reason. I hope what we’re doing is cutting through the weeds and bringing things into perspective. And, you know, it’s just more fun to watch a movie with us!” he concludes with a Texas-sized grin.
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