Interviews
‘Suitable Flesh’ – Barbara Crampton and Heather Graham on Gender-Flipped Lovecraft Roles [Interview]
Director Joe Lynch’s (Wrong Turn 2, Mayhem, “Creepshow”) new movie Suitable Flesh, based on H.P. Lovecraft’s The Thing On The Doorstep, is set to unleash body-hopping madness in theaters and VOD on October 27, 2023.
Heather Graham and producer Barbara Crampton star in Suitable Flesh, executive produced by Brian Yuzna (Re-Animator). Dennis Paoli, the writer of Re-Animator and From Beyond, wrote the script.
Joe Lynch and the late Stuart Gordon’s frequent collaborators seamlessly insert Suitable Flesh into Gordon’s Lovecraftian universe (our review) but give it a slight twist in gender-flipping archetypical Lovecraft roles. Bloody Disgusting spoke with Joe Lynch, Heather Graham, and Barbara Crampton out of Tribeca earlier this year, before the SAG-AFTRA strike, where they discussed how Lynch came to direct Suitable Flesh and taking on these rare roles.
It was Barbara Crampton, a producer on Suitable Flesh, who reached out to Joe Lynch about helming the new feature. Crampton reveals that Lynch wasn’t just her top pick to direct but Stuart Gordon’s pick as well.
She explains, “Joe is a very full filmmaker. His movies are always fun. There’s always a lot going on, and I think that’s true of Stuart’s movies. I mean, they’re bold and provocative and wild and somehow a little weird sometimes, and that’s Joe stuff. When I talked to Stuart a couple of years ago, I said, ‘Who do you think is working today that’s similar to your style of stuff?’ Maybe it was a precursor to talking to him later when we got hold of the script, and we wanted to make it; he said, ‘Oh, I really think Joe Lynch is a similar type of filmmaker.‘ I had that in the back of my head, and then Joe and I became friends.”
Crampton continues, “After Stuart passed, I had a conversation with Dennis Paoli, and I said, ‘I really just want to continue my legacy of Lovecraft. Did you guys have anything that was sitting on a shelf that you never did?’ He sent the script to me; it was called The Thing on the Doorstep, as the original story is called. I read it, and I immediately loved it. Immediately.
“Joe was one of the first people I thought of. I mean, I did send it just to do due diligence to a few other directors, and we talked to a few people, but Joe was always at the top of my list, and he’s who I wanted, and if he said yes, it was going to be his. Then, when he said, ‘Yes, I want to make this movie with you guys,’ with AMP Films, who is the production company that I’ve been working with for the past few years, I said, ‘This is no longer a Stuart Gordon film, it’s a Joe Lynch film, so you have to put your stamp on it and do what you want to do.'”
Suitable Flesh follows Psychiatrist Dr. Elizabeth Derby (Graham), a wholesome career woman who has it all until Asa Waite (Judah Lewis) crashes into her life as a troubled patient suffering from an extreme personality disorder. Or does he? That encounter puts Dr. Derby on a wild body-hopping ride fueled by sex and carnage, presenting an unconventional role for Graham. It was Lynch’s idea to gender flip his lead character, which led to Graham’s casting.
Graham shares why she was so excited to play Dr. Derby: “Yeah, as a woman reading a script, it was just so exciting to get this script because Lovecraft’s story was written about a man, and he switched the character to a woman, and so it was so refreshing to get to be the protagonist of this kind of story, which is scary and a neurotic thriller, and I get this opportunity to do so many different fun things. In these stories, exploring sexuality, it’s not usually the woman’s protagonist story. Usually, they’re the object, or they’re the person being cheated on. So, to explore a woman getting herself into a bad situation from her point of view, it’s pretty rare, actually. So, I’m so grateful for having this opportunity.”
The central friendship between Dr. Derby and her colleague-turned-confidant Daniella Upton (Crampton) serves as an emotional backbone and gives both actors interesting dynamics to play with the more the horror ensues. But that very nearly might not have been the case.
Crampton reveals, “At first I wasn’t going to be in it. Then we were thinking about who we were going to cast for Heather’s friend, and then we just had multiple conversations, and somebody said, I’m not going to say who, ‘I think you should play the part, Barbara.’ I went, ‘Oh, I don’t know.’ Then I asked Joe, and I said, ‘Well, what do you think? I don’t know.’
Lynch, also on hand for this interview, interjects, “All right, can I be honest?” While Crampton hadn’t initially considered herself for a role in Suitable Flesh, the director certainly did.
Lynch confesses, “I wanted to ask you since day one, but I remember you were just like, ‘I just want to be the producer on this.’ And I thought I’m not going to tell you what to do. You’re Barbara Crampton, you’re my boss now. But secretly, in the back of my head, I always wanted to see that dynamic because there are certain scenes where this becomes a showdown. To watch these two powerful women square off to each other, not just in a physical sensibility but in a mental sensibility. But we also needed two people who you could believe could be friends. That was tantamount to the entire film.”
“Early on, we were watching White Christmas, and there’s this beautiful song called ‘Sisters’ in it, and at one point, we were trying to get that in the movie, but it was way too expensive. But that sensibility of these two women who were best friends, maybe there’s more to their dynamic than is even on the page,” Lynch continues. “But we wanted to explore that. To watch these two characters and these two powerful actors embody them, it needed to be believable. The second that Barbara texted me, the relief on my face, I could tell, was just like, ‘Oh, thank God she said it and not me.’ Because it was a no-brainer at that point.”
Don’t miss Crampton and Graham in rare form when Suitable Flesh arrives in theaters and VOD this Friday.
Interviews
“Pretty Little Liars: Summer School” Series Creators on Bigger Slasher Season, Horror Influences, and Spooky Spaghetti
The slasher-themed relaunch of “Pretty Little Liars” from series creators/writers/executive producers Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa (“Riverdale,” “Chilling Adventures of Sabrina”) and Lindsay Calhoon Bring (“Chilling Adventures of Sabrina”) is back with the brand new season “Pretty Little Liars: Summer School,“ plunging the final girls into a summer of horror.
“Summer School“ begins TODAY (May 9), only on Max.
After surviving last season’s Millwood massacre and unmasking “A,“ Mouse (Malia Pyles), Noa (Maia Reficco), Faran (Zaria), Imogen (Bailee Madison) and Tabby (Chandler Kinney) are back to process their trauma and get on with their lives. Except they’ll be forced to take on summer school. When a mysterious new villain emerges, summer school won’t be the only thing derailing the girls’ plans for summer fun and romance (read our review).
Bloody Disgusting spoke with Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa and Lindsay Calhoon Bring about the second season, which continues the heavy emphasis on horror and packs in the references. That even includes an homage to Bloody Disgusting!
The pair also reveal more about this season’s threat, and what lies ahead.
“Pretty Little Liars: Original Sin“ saw the core five survive their violent confrontation with “A,“ presenting a unique scenario in creating a slasher centered around not one but five Final Girls. That presented a unique challenge for the writers this season.
Aguirre-Sacasa explains, “It’s funny, your first question literally cuts to the heart of basically every conversation we have in the writer’s room, which is most slasher movies or shows have one final girl. But the very essence, heart, and DNA of our show are that we have five final girls. Six, if you count Kelly [Mallory Bechtel]. One of the tropes of a final girl is that there’s always an amazing chaser test at the end of the movie. We landed, I think, pretty early on the idea that Bloody Rose would test each girl as though preparing them to be the final girl for the final test. So that was a very conscious decision early on, and that would be a cool way to create horror set pieces for each girl.“
“It was,“ Calhoon Bring adds. “In season one, our ultimate final girl ended up, story-wise, thematically, with our sins of the mothers being tied to the child, and the ultimate sinner being Imogen’s mother. Our ultimate final Final girl was Imogen. This season going in, we knew that we wanted to test each girl, as Roberto said, but we also did love this idea of one of our little liars being the final Final Girl. So without giving too much away, our finale does center on one of our liars as the ultimate Final Girl this season.“
There’s a distinct tonal shift this season, with “Summer School“ much lighter than the grim “Original Sin.“ While the setting contributes to that, Bloody Disgusting asked the showrunners whether the shift in horror – embracing everything from creepypastas to cult horror – informed that tone shift in any way.
Calhoon Bring answers, “We always approach every episode, every season with story first, character first, and what are our little liars going through? We knew that with season two, we didn’t want to forget the events of season one. We didn’t want them to jump past them. We wanted them to live in them and move through them. At the same time, per your tone question, we thought, ‘Gosh, season one was really heavy. The girls were grappling with really dark, grounded horrors and dramas, as well as the heightened horror of having a Michael Myers chase them with a knife.‘ We did want to infuse more fun into this. Summer, to us, did feel like the perfect backdrop for fun, slasher horror, a little more fun for the girls bringing in Dr. Sullivan [Annabeth Gish] to help them work through their traumas, but also give them permission to have summer flings, have summer jobs, have a good time. So we did consciously do a bit of a tonal shift as well.“
Creepypastas influence the horror in a huge way this season, both with the villain, Bloody Rose, and the mysterious “Spooky Spaghetti“ website. Aguirre-Sacasa breaks down the idea behind “Spooky Spaghetti“ and a surprising source of inspiration for its creation.
“Obviously, one of the inspirations for season two was the Slender Man,“ the showrunner says. “Lindsay and I love not the Slender Man fictional movie but the Slender Man documentary, and we are obsessed with the Slender Man true crime case. I think one of the things we think is so terrifying about the Slender Man is that you kind of don’t know if he’s real or not. You don’t know if it’s this supernatural figure that crossed over into the real world. So, we needed a website that held that legend, and thus Spooky Spaghetti was born. One of the really fun things about it that we liked was that it took one of our favorite Pretty Little Liars, Mouse, and put her at the heart of the mystery in a really organic, cool way. Sometimes, that can be the hardest thing to do. But I remember when we got the cut of the first episode, I think, Lindsay, you got to see it before me, and you called, and you were like, ‘Oh my God, here’s what really works. Spooky Spaghetti.‘ We agree.
“But for sure, listen, I think we all check Deadline and Bloody Disgusting ten times a day, so it’s an homage to Bloody Disgusting as well.“
The default aim for slasher sequels is to go bigger than before, and “Summer School“ takes that to heart with more elaborate, visually creative set pieces this season. Especially the more Bloody Rose tests the Liars.
“We have such an amazing team, and we love talking about them,“ Calhoon Bring says of this season’s sets. “Our production designer, Brett Tanzer, and his set decorator, Lauren [Crawford]. We also have an amazing locations manager, Dave Lieber, who has so much fun. Sometimes, the locations will inspire a story for us, too, because as he’s looking around the locations in the upstate New York towns that we’re seeing, he’ll send us photos and say, ‘Hey, I found this amazing roller rink.‘ Then we think, ‘Well, we have to use that amazing roller rink. We have to find a space for this.‘ ‘Hey, there’s this an abandoned campground. What could we do? Can we do an outdoor movie at an abandoned campground? That would be amazing.‘
“We worked very closely with our team to make sure that every episode was very special and had a special set piece. A big ongoing conversation for us that was a tricky thing to do actually was that we knew early on that we wanted Faran to be a lifeguard, and we knew that we wanted to have a pool as a summer set piece. Those conversations happen so early, and finding a pool isn’t as easy as it sounds. It’s like finding the right pool, making sure that it’s the right aesthetic, that it’s broken down, that there are woods nearby, that it feels scary, that it’s operational, that we can use it. So, those conversations happened even sometimes earlier than we were writing the episodes.”
Aguirre-Sacasa elaborates, “Just to piggyback off that, the day that Lindsay and I got emails from Dave, our locations manager, for the church where Redemption House, that storyline was set. When we toured it, it was like, ‘This is the creepiest.‘ Literally, it’s next to a cemetery, and across the street from it is another cemetery. It’s like, ‘Yeah, we’re going to be setting up shop here.‘ We just moved in for the season. It was really great.”
While the series creators won’t spoil all the horror fun ahead in “Pretty Little Liars: Summer School” – but definitely expect the new season to really embrace all of your summer horror favorites in a big way – the pair do offer some exciting teases for what’s ahead.
“We’re so happy that we have Annabeth Gish with us, reprising her role as Dr. Sullivan,“ Calhoon Bring tells us. “Roberto, you’ve mentioned this; one of our favorite things in horror movies is the amazing monologue that a harrowed, usually final girl gives talking about her trauma. Roberto invoked Phoebe Cates in Gremlins, talking about that ill-fated night. We love those. We think that Annabeth, as Dr. Sullivan, delivers a tour de force horror monologue and a horror sequence in our penultimate [episode] that we’re very, very excited for people to see.“
“Yeah, it is kind of like Jason’s mother’s monologue about Jason drowning,“ Aguirre-Sacasa added. “It’s about Dr. Loomis talking about Michael Myers and the devil’s eyes. We love that. I think we can also tease in our finale. It’s our favorite episode of the season, the finale, and knowing that we had done essentially a handful of final girl chases and tests throughout, we knew that our finale had to be pretty apocalyptic and pretty epic. So we looked at some of our favorite movies like Midsommar and Texas Chain Saw Massacre for those truly apocalyptic horror movie endings that are just so gonzo, and without spoiling much, we wanted to do our version of that.
“And it is pretty harrowing, pretty harrowing.”
Which Final Girl will become the ultimate Final Girl this season? “Pretty Little Liars: Summer School” debuts exclusively on Max on May 9 at 12:00 a.m. PT with two episodes, followed by one new episode airing weekly through June 20.
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