.png)
2 months ago
17 ARTICLE AD
EXCLUSIVE: When we speak, Chuck Russell is in LA, getting ready for the world premiere of his new film Witchboard. It will be a homecoming in more ways than one; first, since — although it takes place in New Orleans — his supernatural horror was largely shot in Montreal, home to the Fantasia Festival, which is hosting the screening. But, more than that, Witchboard marks Russell’s return to the genre that introduced him in the late ’80s, initially with 1987’s A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors and then, a year later with his seriously gory take on camp ‘50s B-movie The Blob (tagline: “Terror has no shape!”).
Based very loosely (as in, not really very much at all) on Kevin Tenney’s 1986 VHS hit of the same name, Witchboard stars Madison Iseman as Emily, a recovering drug addict who, with her fiancé Christian (Aaron Dominguez) and their group of friends, is about to open a new organic café in the French Quarter of New Orleans. While picking exotic mushrooms, Emily comes across an ancient pendulum board from 17th-century France that was recently stolen from a local museum. Emily thinks of it as a novelty, an antique to hang on the café wall, but it soon becomes clear that the board is a dangerous gateway, one that will deliver a supernatural threat from the past smack-bang into the present.
Although he decamped from horror in the ’90s, first with 1994’s oddball comedy The Mask, starring Jim Carrey, and then with the action thriller Eraser (1996), starring Arnold Schwarzenegger, Russell is very pleased to be back on old turf, and he is admirably vocal in his insistence that the film’s many shocking, not-for-the-squeamish moments should remain unspoiled. But though it may, initially, seem a little old-fashioned in today’s market — where it will jostle for attention with more self-aware genre pieces like MaXXXine, Oddity and, at a very generous push, Longlegs — Witchboard has refreshing purity to it.
The director embraces that reaction. “We had some guys we call The Horror Bros come in, that were all tatted up and were horror film experts, and they were impressed that there was a story,” he recalled. “They said too many horror films don’t really have a story to follow, they’re all about the set pieces. Now, look, I’m a horror fan, so I think there’s room for all kinds of sub-genres and different ways of doing things. But I like rooting interest, even in a horror film. It’s got to be scary — but we have to care about the characters.”
Here, Russell talks Deadline through his storied career…
DEADLINE: You’ve been away from horror for a while. What brought you back to it?
RUSSELL: Well, for one thing, I like imagination, and an element of fantasy, and it’s been hard to find a property to work on where I can do that and make things really scary and unpredictable. When you have one character being killed after another, it becomes too formulaic. The original Witchboard is a little bit of pop-culture real estate: There was room to really reimagine it and take it further. And also, I’d been looking to do something with pendulum boards. That’s one of the things I learned about from my own research into magic. I’ve never seen pendulum boards in films, and they’re such a visual, fun device. They’re legitimately the precursor to Ouija boards. You were burned at the stake if you had a pendulum board in the 1700s — the Pope outlawed them. So, it was a combination of things. [Laughs.] People have made references to The Bear. We’d already polished [the script] before that came out, but I’m glad for the comparison. It’s a compliment.
DEADLINE: So, you were basically building on the IP from that original movie?
RUSSELL: It was a great IP to reimagine, and I didn’t want to get back into horror unless I had the right property, where I could do something that was literally imaginative and give myself room to do some visual techniques that I hadn’t seen before in the genre. I wanted to get back into practical effects, and this script offered all those opportunities. I said, “Let’s take a deep dive into a supernatural world I’ve not seen before.” I got to do a film where I used techniques for nightmares — which I’ve always been fascinated with — hallucinatory sequences, and even a touch of time travel. I got to use everything in the paint box.
DEADLINE: What story did you want to tell, and how did you approach the characters?
RUSSELL: Well, first of all, there’s a time in our lives — and for me it was right after college, right after school — where you still have a bond with your group of friends. As we get older, families and work get in the way, but I wanted to capture that moment. In this case, the group of friends has a challenge, they have a goal. They’re opening a cafe together in New Orleans, which is a very competitive market. I wanted to tell a story where there was a very strong basis to their relationships. So, there was that, and there was also a love story.
Evil is a real force in the world, as I guess we all know, and I do believe that spiritual evil is a real thing. But there has to be a balance, and I can only dramatize the dark if there’s a bit of light. So, these are flawed characters. It’s a group of young underdogs. But inside all of us there’s an everyman who can face the greatest darkness. That’s the fun of horror: we have the catharsis of seeing what it would be like to face our greatest fears. As filmmakers, we play a game with the audience, to keep them right on the cusp. Not to have them guessing what’s next but challenging them to wonder what they might do in that situation.
DEADLINE: At some points, it reminded me a little bit of Ken Russell’s The Devils, in terms of the social hysteria surrounding witches…
RUSSELL: I should look back at that. For me, just in terms of researching Wicca and the history of witchcraft, I didn’t want to do a straight-up, one-dimensional witch. So, with our witch character Naga — that Antonia Desplat does an incredible job with — there’s a history. What drove her [from white magic] to the dark side? I think when your antagonist has a motivation that we can relate to, it makes that antagonist even more powerful. It’s true that the church used to persecute herbalists and say, “This is witchcraft. We don’t condone it.” And to this day there’s some question about herbal remedies and such things. So, look, it’s a sub-note of the story, but I wanted to show the witch before she really crossed into darkness. And for her, it’s revenge that crosses her into darkness.
DEADLINE: There aren’t really all that many witch movies — they don’t exactly trip off the tongue. How much did you look back to history and how much did you look to other movies to create the world you wanted to build?
RUSSELL: This was kind of a gut thing. All I knew is that I didn’t want Naga to be the same sort of shadowy person you see in lot of found-footage movies, where you let the audience’s imagination do all the work. I wanted to challenge myself to be equally scary but have well-rounded characters. I thought [Robert Eggers’] movie The Witch did a very good job of that sort of thing. But I try not to reference other films, to be honest. I let the script take me along the path. Once I have the setups and the characters locked in, I like to leave myself a little room for improvisation, even while I’m writing. And I just wanted to make sure I never let it get boring or too formulaic. And I think, ultimately, we did a pretty good job of keeping the story turns just ahead of the audience.
DEADLINE: How did you approach the gore after you’d been out the game for a little while? Gore is something that comes in and out of style. Sometimes it’s back with a bang and sometimes less is more. How did you figure out how gory this film should and would be?
RUSSELL: I did practical effects as much as I could. I find practical effects much more frightening. Technically, we have so much more control now, because we can always use CGI as a tool, but I use that only to clean up my practical effects. The gore was determined by doing physical effects. I did call out, “More blood!” a few times. [Laughs.] I did. It happened. But I have my personal limits. I think when people cut back to show the blood running, that’s a big mistake. The trick is to get the audience into the characters’ heads. That’s the most frightening thing. It’s not really about how much blood there is, it’s about how much we care about the character and how much suspense builds up whenever there’s a violent payoff. It’s just like comedy. Horror and comedy are very similar to me. After a bit of suspense, you do something surprising. In comedy, you get your laugh.
The shots themselves can also become a chess game with the audience. There are ways of framing a window, so they think maybe someone’s going to come through it, but they don’t know for sure. That’s the fun. Is that window off-center? It’s almost subliminal for the audience, but things seem so much more violent if you play the suspense game correctly.
DEADLINE: To go back a long way in your career, you started out with New Line, which must have been a very interesting, creative time.
RUSSELL: Those were great days.
DEADLINE: What can you tell me about that?
RUSSELL: I loved working at New Line. Bob Shaye was the real deal — you could get your answers from one person — and Mike De Luca and Toby Emmerich were learning their producing craft. In particular, De Luca was a great ally. Those were exciting days, and I still try to emulate that business model. For example, Jim Carrey was not at all a big star when we made The Mask, let alone Cameron Diaz, who had never even acted before. And that was expensive, for an independent-style film. So, they supported me using, basically, a TV star in Jim Carrey for the lead of The Mask. For Nightmare on Elm Street 3, they also trusted me. I said, “If we’re going to do a third one, we’ve got to take it further. Let’s make Freddy scary still, but let’s take his surreal powers a little bit further.” That was a classic situation where a great new film company was invested in the filmmaker as well.
We made stars more than we got stars in those days: Patricia Arquette’s first acting gig was Elm Street 3. That was the thrill of it. I’ve gotten to do something similar on Witchboard. I don’t have what are thought of as traditional marquee names, although Jamie Campbell Bower, within the genre, is now huge. He’s freaking brilliant, and a great, classic, disciplined English actor who I think could do almost anything. So, Jamie, I suppose, is our biggest name. Madison Iseman who did one or two Jumanji films and an Annabelle film is a wonderful actress who, I think, is just coming into her leading lady time. So, getting to use a young ensemble cast like this, some of them very new, is very interesting.
That’s a lot of fun for a director. It’s one thing to take a Schwarzenegger in the ’90s and then have to feed the brand, pay off what the audience expects. But it was fun to direct Dwayne Johnson in The Scorpion King, his first leading role. I kept seeing a billboard of him in The Mummy Returns while we were shooting. I said, “I thought you only did two days on that show?” He goes, “I did.” I mean, he’d already become a wrestling star. But to take Dwayne into a full leading-man role… It’s thrilling, as a director, to help somebody and find how far you can take them. That was the fun of Witchboard: not having the restrictions of a star-driven cast. I love working with stars, but it’s so much fun to find new talent as well.
DEADLINE: Isn’t that what you did with Nightmare on Elm Street 3? It seemed to me at the time that you brought it back a bit when it was in danger of becoming a bit campy after the second one.
RUSSELL: New Line was thinking they were not going to make a third one. I was looking for my first directing gig, and they said, “Look at this script we’ve got for number three.” They weren’t really happy with it. There wasn’t a level of success with number two, either creatively or at the box office — and I say that with respect, I know people love number two. Now, I had just done [my first film] Dreamscape — as a writer and producer — and I’d studied with dream researchers. I told New Line, “We can take what happens in nightmares further and rhyme it with the personalities of the characters.” Again, I was going for the group vibe, the dream warriors. I mean, if you’re gathered together with your friends, that’s actually the way to fight Freddy. So, with my pal Frank Darabont we rewrote the script, which was written by Wes Craven and Bruce Wagner. There had been a parting of the ways at that time between Craven and New Line, so I didn’t really have Wes’s support.
I have a level of dark humor that I’m very comfortable with. I thought that the problem with the Elm Street formula is that you can get too campy with it, and then the audience realizes there’s nothing at stake. If it appears that the filmmakers are having too much fun, you’re going to take the audience out of the film. So, my question to myself is always this: Can I have a level of dark, character-based humor, and a level of visual imagination that I find interesting, and still be true to the story? Can I still create suspense, and still make the audience fear for the character’s lives? That’s the game — not to get too silly.
DEADLINE: Probably the biggest challenge with The Blob, I would’ve thought!
RUSSELL: For The Blob, I knew everyone would say, “Who’s going to play Steve McQueen?” And so I took that character and killed him in the first act. [Laughs.] Look, I give credit to Hitchcock in Psycho for killing Janet Leigh so early on. But once the audience realizes everybody is potentially a victim, you can get their attention. The problem with The Blob is that even just saying “The Blob” makes you smile. It’s a funny word. But look, I only reimagine things. People have offered me real, legit remakes over the years, and I go, “Why would you remake a great film?” Let’s take a film that’s already resonant in pop culture — like The Blob, and like Witchboard — and take it beyond the original, just as people have done for centuries, telling tales around the fire and adding to them? That’s fun for me.
I don’t know if I answered your original question — like, why Witchboard? — but I was really hungering for horror again. I really had a little bit of a longing to try it again, but only if I could top my own work. So, what you see here is me basically trying to top myself with techniques and ways of telling a story that I learned from my first two horror films. To try to make this my personal trilogy of horror, from the Elm Street sequel to the re-imagining of The Blob and Witchboard. I believe Witchboard can become as classic as The Blob has.
DEADLINE: So why did you move away from horror?
RUSSELL: I got depressed. I was working with some of the top people in horror, in character design and makeup design, and I was putting my head as deep into it as I’d expect my actors to. It was challenging. I’ve been fortunate enough to see my movies play all over the world, because I was making films at a time when we still did junkets. I’d go all over the world, and I could see how they were being promoted in each territory. It gave me a sense of what I was putting out there. I don’t think a lot of young filmmakers today are so concerned with this, but I personally feel a responsibility to how I’m affecting my audience.
We all want to affect them on a personal level, and horror can reach people on a personal level — more than other genres. Horror is literally Shakespearean: Shakespeare used horror. So I’m conscious that if I want to take people into absolute darkness, if I want to shock them, if I want to put something in their head they can’t unsee, am I going to also break a moment of human warmth, break a moment of the human heart and not show its strengths against dark forces — dark forces I think are very real in the world, now more than ever? I really felt that responsibility. I had to get out of horror.
[Pause.] You know The Mask was supposed to be a horror film?
DEADLINE: Really?
RUSSELL: The original comic book for The Mask is what’s called splatter-punk. The Mask would pull an ax out of his body and chop up his victims. The Mask comic book was a little derivative of the Elm Street movies; horrific deaths with punchlines. He would do whatever he needed to do, and there usually would be puns. So, when New Line showed that to me, I said, “It’s going to be so much like Freddy. Why don’t we give it to this guy Jim Carrey?” He was an explosive new comedy talent [on Fox’s In Living Color]. I’d produced Back to School [in 1986] with Rodney Dangerfield, I’d done comedy and improv in school, and back in Chicago, and l loved comedy. I said, “Why don’t we take Jim Carrey and do something very original with this material?” At first, they said no. A year later they came back to me and said, “What were you saying about a girl and a dog in a nightclub? How would that work?”
I mean, that also answers your question about New Line. That’s what it was like in those days: Really being in touch with a new group of talented filmmakers rising up, a company that wasn’t scared to take chances. Remember, Bob Shaye did Lord of the Rings when no one else would do it. Everyone had turned it down, and he believed in the filmmaker. So, it was a company that was large enough to give you a budget. They weren’t minuscule budgets, but they still allowed a level of creativity that’s sometimes difficult in the bureaucracy of the big studios.
DEADLINE: You then segued into action drama, working with some really big stars. What prompted that? Was it a question of being trusted with those stars, or was it about the package that you could deliver?
RUSSELL: Well, I like to think that it’s both. One of the jobs I had when I was a kid was just getting coffee for the Stunts Unlimited team. I learned stunt craft, and I learned that no matter how skilled an actor or actress might be — we call them “handy” — no matter how handy an actor or actress may be, if they break a finger, you’re in big trouble. So, it was all about the balance. How much can we use our principles in action, and where do you draw the line with safety? You become a little bit of a David Copperfield: How can I make this stunt look very impactful? I honestly have always asked, “Would I dare do it myself?” I may not have the skill of a particularly athletic actor, but I would never put an actor in a situation I wouldn’t do myself. So, I try to design action that way.
And look, I’m an action film fan. For me, comedy was the remedy to dwelling on horror for too long. In the editing room, you’re going over and over the same footage for hours and hours. Screams going back and forth. Comedy was the remedy for that. And then after comedy, I really wanted to do some of the big action I loved from when I was a kid. I had some stunt craft from those days running with Stunts Unlimited, and I was excited to get to try it out myself as a director. I never got anybody hurt — and we did some wild stuff — so I’m very proud of that.
The scene with Arnold Schwarzenegger jumping out of the airplane in Eraser still blows me away. The art of storyboards really can be seen in that sequence. But these guys and girls are actually quite courageous. People assume they’re pampered Hollywood stars, and that’s true to some extent. But the ones you see now, they really are disciplined. If you look at Sean Connery in Dr. No in his bathing suit and then look at Chris Hemsworth, or some of these guys and girls today, there’s no comparison. The discipline it takes, just to be in shape, is incredible. I’ve seen Chris do Muay Thai for real.
So, there’s a level of discipline in people like Schwarzenegger and Dwayne Johnson that I have a great admiration and respect for, and if they’re on my set they’re going to be safe. Arnold, in particular, was a bit surprised by that, because I think people look at him — even filmmakers — and assume he’s really that guy. But the truth is, his knees probably hurt. He’s done a lot. And I understand that. I go, “If you don’t like the explosion, this is where you just sit right down. If you get anything in your eyes, stop right there.” I’m never scared to cut in the middle of an action sequence. The first day I worked with him, we had something like that happen, and Arnold was quite surprised — and very pleased.
So, I think I have to have their back. I have to know what I’m doing, and my team has to know what they’re doing, and we break down what they’re able to do. But people like Dwayne Johnson… In The Scorpion King, those swords were really on fire. I enhanced them with CGI, but they looked good because there were real fire elements on those blades. Dwayne is a big guy, but he can move like Nureyev. It blows my mind. This guy is that large and can make those moves like no one else. He’s a real champ.
Anyway, I guess the point I’m making is that, in action movies, the audiences may or may not realize that the actors really are doing a lot of that stuff, and it does take courage. Even if it’s take three and you’re just running up the stairs with squibs blowing up around you, it still takes some guts. Nowadays we do more of it digitally, but the practical effects always get a livelier reaction from the talent.
DEADLINE: You must have seen a lot of excess in your time. Do you ever remember a moment on being on set and wondering how much money was being spent?
RUSSELL: There’s always a moment — and this goes back to when I was doing one-act plays as a director — where you come onto a set and you think, “My God, they really built it!” There’s always this weird inner voice. Like the throne room set on The Scorpion King, or the alligator set on Eraser. You walk onto a set that size and you think, “Am I going to really need all that?” I try to plan it ahead of time, so we don’t waste any money, but the scale is impressive. Now we add the CGI, that’s another skillset. But there’s nothing like walking in on a great set. And the scenes play so much better when they actors are in the environment.
So, yeah, The Scorpion King — and Eraser in particular — were studio films with a capital S. We filmed Scorpion King on the back lot of Universal with the tour buses going by, and Eraser on the biggest stage at Warner Brothers, dropping Arnold Schwarzenegger on what’s called a descender rig. It was brand-new at the time; you almost reach full freefall, but the braking system doesn’t hurt your body when it stops. Putting a principal actor in that rig for the first time… I mean those were thrilling times, absolute thrills. We tested everything. I wouldn’t do any of it if I didn’t feel it was safe. I can’t enjoy myself unless I know all that ahead of time, and I know all the moving pieces. But it’s amazing. Directing the larger studio films is a little bit like being the ringmaster of a big circus. You’ve got to know where all the parts are. And make sure the lions don’t fight the bears.
DEADLINE: How did you first get into film?
RUSSELL: I swept stages on Seward Street while I was writing. I came out [to California] after college, the University of Illinois, and it was a pure adventure and very much the cliche of the American dream. Everybody else was going to the beach and wanted to be an actor, but I was working my way into film production, and I wanted to direct. So, I brought my sort of blue-collar Chicago mentality to the job, and people learned they could count on me. I took a very traditional route — getting coffee for Stunts Unlimited and sweeping stages on Seward Street — but I was always writing screenplays. I became an assistant director — second assistant, then first assistant — and learned more and more about the technical side of directing. Finally, I got Dreamscape made, which was the first thing I co-wrote with David Loughery, who just sadly just passed away last week. Joe Ruben directed it. We had Christopher Plummer, Max von Sydow and Dennis Quaid. We actually fought for Dennis Quaid, who was a new young star at the time.
So, I did work my way up somewhat traditionally, and the way to learn, for me, was on the set more than anything. Anyway, I got my breaks, but my big break was Elm Street 3.
DEADLINE: You’ve worked with some people that might be considered difficult. What are the lessons you learned? How do you work with an actor or an actress who might be difficult? What have you learned over the years?
RUSSELL: How can I say this? Usually when an actor or an actress is being very difficult, there’s always a reason, perhaps even one that they themselves may not be aware of. One of the things I do is, I table read, because sometimes there’ll be an actor that hasn’t really studied the script and there’ll be some scenes they don’t like. I call it a “Tea-time reading”. It’s casual. We have social fun to some extent, but we read through it. We work in where improvs might be. I’m always polishing dialogue based on those table reads.
On set? Never yell at people on set. I learned this from assistant-directing and watching other directors. As I said, there’s often a reason that’s not apparent when talent is unhappy. Sometimes it’s insecurity. Sometimes they have something going on in their personal life that you would be much more sympathetic towards if you realized what they were going through. Now, I don’t need to know about their personal life. In fact, that’s also a problem: You don’t want to be their best friend, you just want to lead them on the trail of the film. You want to lead them through the woods with confidence.
But if I really have a problem, I will confront it, and it will be in private. I’m not going to name names. I’ve worked with one star in particular who was unhireable at the time. He was a bit older than me, and I had a great deal of respect, and I wanted him in the picture. I sat down with him, and I said, “I know that you don’t suffer fools.” This is a pretty macho guy. We connected just from that point forward. I said, “Whatever your recent problems have been, this is your chance, because I will bark to the whole town how great you were to work with. What do you need?” If something happens on set, sometimes you just roll with it, but sometimes you need to stop and have a quiet chat, but never in front of the crew. And I feel the same way about the crew. [Laughs.] This is quite a long answer, sorry!
DEADLINE: My point is that you’ve directed a lot of big movies, with major stars, but without any of those terrible production stories that we so often hear.
RUSSELL: I don’t avoid conflict, but I never feed conflict, right? Winning an argument with an actor is never a good idea. I’m there to get a result from an actor, and a lot of times they come to me afterwards and say, “Oh my God, you were right.” Another tip, especially when you’re a writer-director or a writer-producer, is this: Don’t hammer an actor to get the line reading in your head. Ask yourself, “What are they bringing? How can I use his or her real instincts, their real personality, and not just hammer them a certain way?” If you’re a writer directing, you shouldn’t be seduced by what’s in your head. You’ve got to see the fun of film. It’s a chemistry set. These are charismatic human beings, and not always for good reasons, but it’s like a chemistry set. You have to ask, “What does this actor bring to this particular line today, and how can I fan the flames instead of trying to control them?”
DEADLINE: What are you working on at the moment?
RUSSELL: Because I legitimately produced this, and directed it, and wrote it, I’m seeing it right through. Going to these film festivals is like planning a wedding. Looking ahead, I’m not sure what will be next. The only genre I haven’t done that I’d like to try is smart, near-future sci-fi, I’m looking at one of those. But I had so much fun with Witchboard, I’m not going to avoid horror again. After Elm Street and The Blob, it was a bit too heavy, a bit too oppressive, to keep imagining — from the writing stage, through directing the actors and going into the editing — all these horrific moments. It wore on me. It wore on me. And as I said, comedy was a remedy. But… I don’t know. The fun with me is I that have a short attention span. I like different genres, and I’m not scared to jump into them. Whether it’s comedy, horror or action. Which seem to be the things I’m most offered.
DEADLINE: Do you think Witchboard could lead to a trilogy, like the original, or are you not thinking that far ahead?
RUSSELL: Oh, believe me, there’s little Easter eggs. I’ve already started writing a sequel. I never like talking about that, because the fans have to decide. I respect the audience too much — I want them to want a sequel. But in this case, I couldn’t resist. There are little setups in this story that lead to a larger world. There is a world of Witchboard in my imagination.
