Interviews
[Interview] Jesse Eisenberg Recalls the Troubled Production of Wes Craven’s ‘Cursed’
Wes Craven‘s Cursed will turn 15 years old in just a few months, though if the film had been released when it was originally supposed to be, it would have turned 15 last August.
Cursed had a notoriously troubled production, with several filming delays and reshoots taking place between the start of filming in March 2003 and its eventual release in February 2005. Joe Lipsett and I discussed the film on the Horror Queers podcast last month, where we tried to decipher just what happened with it. Other than deciding that Bob Weinstein is a jerk (big shock there), we couldn’t figure it out. Still, that won’t stop us from continuing our investigation…
That brings us to the reason I’m writing this article.
If you listened to our episode on the film, you’ll recall that Craven shot roughly 90% of Kevin Williamson‘s original script before Weinstein came in and expressed his dissatisfaction over what had been filmed (why he waited that long to tell him is anyone’s guess). He ordered Williamson to re-write the script with a new plot and halted production until he finished. Almost a year later, filming resumed on the new version. Craven himself estimated that 70% of what he originally shot had to be discarded (though the footage supposedly still exists out there somewhere), making the final cut an admittedly choppy and uneven film. Here’s an estimated (but perhaps not 100% correct) timeline of events, based on information that has been made public over the years:
- August 2000 – Kevin Williamson writes the original script for Cursed.
- October 2002 – Bob Weinstein announces that Cursed would “reinvent the werewolf genre,” and Wes Craven would direct, with the movie being released around August 2003.
- March 2003 – Filming begins on Cursed.
- Late Spring/Early Summer 2003 – Bob Weinstein expresses his unhappiness with the 90% of Cursed that had been shot and orders the script to be re-written and the film re-shot with the new script. Production is postponed for almost a year.
- December 2003 – Shooting begins on the new script, with some actors being recast (Mandy Moore‘s character was recast with Mya due to the former’s scheduling conflicts) and some being removed entirely (Skeet Ulrich‘s character Vince, one of the three main protagonists of Williamson’s original script, was no longer a part of the new script).
- Mid-2004 – Two more sets of reshoots are done, one of which being a new ending (well, a newer ending, since it would be the third one written for the film). The film is scheduled to be released in October 2004.
- Fall 2004 – Bob Weinstein demands that the R-rated film be cut down to earn a PG-13 rating. The film is pushed from its October 2004 release date to accommodate these edits.
- February 25, 2005 – Cursed is released in theaters nationwide and opens to overwhelmingly negative reviews and a domestic opening weekend gross of $9.6 million. The film would go on to gross $19.3 million domestically and $10.3 million internationally, for a worldwide total of $29.6 million against a reported budget of $38 million (though some have claimed it ballooned as high as $75 million).
The original plot centered around three strangers brought together by a car accident on Mulholland Drive after they are all attacked and injured by a werewolf. The three characters were named Ellie Hudson (Christina Ricci), Vince Winston (Skeet Ulrich), and Jimmy Myers (Jesse Eisenberg). After Williamson’s re-write, Ellie and Jimmy were turned into siblings reeling from the recent deaths of their parents, and the Vince Winston character was written out entirely. There are plenty of other differences, and if you want to know them you can read the original script, which is available online if you’re good at searching. The re-writes weren’t the only change, however. Rick Baker‘s practical effects were eventually deleted and replaced with KNB EFX Group’s CGI (though Baker has posted some of his work on Twitter over the years).
Craven made his thoughts on his experience with the film clear in an interview with Ain’t It Cool News in 2009, but some of the film’s stars have mentioned Cursed in interviews as well. Judy Greer lamented the re-shoots in an interview with Buzzfeed in 2014 and Christina Ricci criticized the studio system in an interview with The AV Club in 2018. But as far as I know, Jesse Eisenberg has never publicly acknowledged the film outside of the press junkets leading to the film’s release in 2005. Until now, that is.
I had the pleasure of speaking to Eisenberg in advance of Zombieland: Double Tap‘s (our review) release this weekend, but I entered the interview with a secret mission: to ask him about the troubled production of shooting Cursed. As I received the “wrap-it-up” motion from the PR representative, I brought up the fact that Cursed would be turning 15 in February (“FIFTEEN?!”, Eisenberg yelped) and asked him if he could say anything about his experience working on the film. I expected him to be dodgy with his response, which is why I saved the question for the end of the interview (well, that and because it was a question that had nothing to do with Zombieland: Double Tap). So imagine my surprise when Eisenberg expressed not only shock, but excitement at answering the question! Upon being reminded of the rough timeline of the production, he said:
“The first movie was more interesting and provocative. I don’t know why it wasn’t working. Now that we know the behind-the-scenes of the Weinstein company, it makes sense as to why it was so chaotic.”
Seemingly having a blast recalling the complete and total clusterfuck that was his 2003 and 2004 (well, not total clusterfuck, as he was also shooting The Squid and the Whale and M. Night Shyamalan’s The Village during that time), Eisenberg delighted in offering his thoughts on the film, searching his brain for more tidbits of information to give me in the two minutes we had left to speak.
“What else can I tell you,” he asked. “They filmed 90% of the bigger budget version…the first movie was this very splashy thing. The second version was definitely cutting corners in a lot of different ways. And the plot? I thought it was so stupid. I thought the plot was so cliché. They made us brother and sister? The things that they kept [from the original film] were little snippets. Like a car rolling down a hill. They kept that shot.”
As if re-shooting a new film once wasn’t enough, the cast and crew had to go back two more times for reshoots, but they all got a keepsake during the final set of reshoots. As Eisenberg remembers it:
“The crazy part is that after we filmed the whole second version of the film, we had to go back for a third re-shoot which lasted about 20 days. That’s like the length of an independent movie. And then we had to go back a fourth time for like 10 days and they made shirts that said Cursed 4: Back for More.”
Not lost on Eisenberg is the fact that Cursed had a rather apt title. As mentioned above, the film was panned by critics when the film was released in February 2005, with many reviews bringing up the “cursed” production of the film. Eisenberg is fully aware of the irony, and concluded the interview with one final piece of advice:
“I’m not a big believer in…what is it? Semiotics? The study of meanings behind words and symbols? But anyway, don’t do a movie with that particular title.”
Zombieland: Double Tap will be released in theaters nationwide on Friday October 18.
Interviews
‘The Death of Robin Hood’ Director Michael Sarnoski on Brutal Violence and Reinventing the Legend
Michael Sarnoski (A Quiet Place: Day One, Pig) gives a darker spin on a classic ballad in The Death of Robin Hood, which sees a legendary outlaw confront his own violent legacy.
A24 releases the dark reimagining of the classic folk tale in theaters this Friday, June 19.
Hugh Jackman stars as a grizzled Robin Hood, who begins Sarnoski’s latest in a grim place of death and violence before a grave injury presents a rare chance at salvation.
In 13th-century grit and squalor, the violence in The Death of Robin Hood is especially brutal, setting up a stark contrast for the outlaw’s thematic journey in his final days. Speaking with Bloody Disgusting ahead of the film’s release, writer-director Michael Sarnoski explained that the visceral brutality at the film’s outset was both a reflection of period authenticity and in service of Robin’s story.
“It’s always a little bit of both,” Sarnoski explains. “The initial idea for the movie was I wanted to humanize these characters from this old legend and really understand them. So, part of that is understanding the authenticity of the period and studying the brutality of the old ballads. Both things evolved at the same time, because then it became this story about this person who was grappling with their own legacy of violence and their own folklore.”
Photo Credit: Aidan Monaghan/A24
He continues, “It was a little bit of a chicken and the egg thing where it was like, ‘Okay, the authenticity is where we’re going to access the humanity.’ But then, through that, we also have to access how these people felt about that violence. And because of that, we really have to make that violence feel human and real and brutal and not Hollywood-ized at all.“
But don’t expect The Death of Robin Hood to be too beholden to period accuracy; the filmmaker never wanted to lose sight of its characters or their humanity. “I was more trying to capture, in my mind and soul, what it might have felt like to live at that time. When you’re steeped in nature and all of its brutality, but also all of its divinity and spirituality, what would that just feel like on a deeper soul level? A lot of the research was focused on just trying to capture that human side of existing back then.”
The Death of Robin Hood avoids retreading the familiar origin story of the outlaw and his Merry Men; the past is a distant memory steeped in blood for this iteration of Robin Hood. Save for Little John (Bill Skarsgård), very little calls back to the familiar folklore fixtures and iconography.
“It wasn’t straightforward,” Sarnoski says of his writing process and choosing which characters to incorporate. “It kind of happened organically. I knew I just wanted the pieces that I needed for that character, but then at the same time, I wanted to acknowledge that he’s grappling with what he believes his life was, and the violence of that life and of that time. But then at the same time, he’s also not a fully reliable narrator. He has been jaded for decades and has just been steeped in that violence. Even he and Little John especially aren’t 100% sure which of these things were stories and which were real in some way, because I think even in our own lives we have that, where our memories become these stories that we just tell each other.”
“I wanted to make sure that we’re doing some justice to that Robin Hood legend, and there are a lot of references to that. I wanted to use it sparingly and specifically, but then also acknowledge that no one in this world is 100% sure who this guy was, not even the guy himself.”
Photo Credit: Aidan Monaghan/A24
While Jackman commands the screen as the world-weary outlaw, it’s Murray Bartlett (“The Last of Us”, Opus) who steals scenes as the enigmatic leper standing vigil over the Priory.
Bartlett’s complex performance, buried under unrecognizable costuming and prosthetics, surprised even Sarnoski in more ways than one. “The initial surprise was finding such a great actor who was willing to completely disappear. And that takes a lot of ego death and bravery and excitement for the pure creative, emotional side, and also bravery in the performance side of, ‘You’re not going to have 90% of the tools that you usually use. You’re going to have to do this with your eyes, your voice, and just your physicality.’ So, I think just the surprise of finding someone who was like that was the feature, not the bug. He was so excited about that, and he found it very liberating.
“Then, it sounds kind of obvious, but the next surprise was just you write this character on the page, and you’re like, ‘Okay, he’s supposed to have this depth, he’s mysterious, but he’s also gentle, and he becomes this almost teacher.’ In your mind, you’re like, ‘Okay, I think this character can work.’ But then you see Murray embody it and you’re like, ‘Oh, this is so far beyond what I ever could have hoped for.’ And it’s so moving and so human in spite of all the limitations on the performance.”
Sarnoski notes this character acts as the ferryman, right on the cusp of life and death. That, along with the period, also informed the Leper’s look, “In those old monasteries, they had these orchard cemeteries that were also where they buried the body. It’s this place of graves and growth. He has subtly different outfits that he wears depending on if he’s ferryman or orchardman. There was a lot of thought that went into all of that.”
Credit: Aidan Monagha
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