Rob Zombie's Halloween

[modage]

Boo(oooooooooooooo)

[MacGuffin]

EXCL: Rob Zombie Interview
Source: ShockTillYouDrop

Two recent test screenings of Halloween haven't killed Rob Zombie's momentum any. The writer-director of The Devil's Rejects is burning through post-production white hot to an August 31st release dragging a jumpsuit-wearin', knife-wielding masked companion named Michael Myers in tow. He's fine-tuning his beast, a reworking of John Carpenter's '78 classic, amidst a deafening roar of Internet opinions and speculation that only grew louder when, after a New York research preview, Zombie went back behind the camera for a week of additional shooting.

On Friday, July 27th he'll stand before the masses to talk about all things Halloween at the San Diego Comic-Con where Dimension Films will be holding their presentation from 2:30pm - 4pm in Ballroom 20.

Given it's our third or fourth time (we've both lost track) discussing the film this year, Zombie and I keep our most recent discussion loose, steering the conversation along subjects such as the recent test screenings, Halloween's marketing and the sustained challenges of crafting one of the year's most looked forward to horror films.

ShockTillYouDrop.com: How did the test screening out here go?
Rob Zombie: The test screening was through the roof. Still, even if the movie audiences love it, you feel weird after those screenings. I went out to see "Transformers" and after ["Halloween"] was over [the Dimension execs] all came up to me and had these looks on their faces and I was like, "Oh, Jesus. What happened?" and they said the scores were unbelievable.

Shock: Was that the same sentiment at the East Coast screening?
Zombie: That went great too. The West Coast version of the film we showed was far more finished than the East Coast version, so it scored much better. That's to be expected. This whole thing has been amazing just for me, because we've been doing ADR and sound now, and a scene will just jump, especially for a horror movie. Once you get the sound effects and music in there it's a whole different ballgame. When you test these things with rough sound and temp music, it's a real nightmare.

Shock: Is everything going according to your vision or are there elements that are surpassing your expectations?
Zombie: There are certain aspects of this that have surpassed anything I could've hoped for - the two biggest wild cards were always: Who would play young Michael? And, who would play Laurie [Strode]? Tyler as Michael Myers, too. I wanted him I and thought he'd be great. Those three people were the unknowns in a sense. He so delivered above and beyond that people are gonna be blown away. Everyone else I've worked with on this I knew would be great. Malcolm [McDowell], who I'd never worked with, but I knew his stuff, I was confident he'd carry the role. But casting a 10-year-old kid [Daeg Faerch], you hope he's charismatic enough to carry the first chunk of the movie. That's the one great thing from the previews, everybody loved classic Michael Myers but everybody loved early Michael. That's one of their favorite parts of the movie and I was like, thank God. But you never know, it's like watching young Darth Vader and saying, "C'mon, when's the real Dark Vader kicking in?"

Shock: Because the film is segmented in that it follows young Michael and then picks up as he gets older, have you considered lengthening the young Michael fraction of the film based on the audience's reception to that stuff?
Zombie: It's the same as it always was, what's great is it's basically falling in according to plan. Because I thought young Michael was really compelling, and young Michael with Loomis in Smith's Grove was really compelling, but I hadn't put it in front of an audience - and it scored great. People seemed to really be into it and paid attention. There was a nice build. I was afraid there'd be this anticipation like, "Quick, let's get to Michael and have him start killing!" People really locked on. They want to compare and contrast to John Carpenter's film but in the first five minutes you go, "Oh, this movie's so different." There's no sense thinking about the difference. The audiences weren't doing that. They were locked in and watched it for the movie it is.

Shock: You and I never spoke about the August release date. Do you share any concerns about the late summer release considering how "The Devil's Rejects" got burned two summers ago?
Zombie: August 31st is when the school bell is ringing and it's like the end of summer. So I don't feel so bad. But with "Hostel: Part II" [Lionsgate] practically gave that the death slot they gave "Rejects" - like, what are they doing? We know that because horror movies in general don't have the promotion budgets they give "Harry Potter" or "Pirates of the Caribbean" or "Spider-Man." There's also something about it being summertime, it's at the beach. Do they want to see a dark, scary movie? Probably not. They want to see "Knocked Up." I think August 31st is kind've like summer's end, it's fall, let's f**kin' bring it. Any earlier and I'd be worried.

Shock: After the first test screening you went back to do some re-shoots...
Zombie: I hate the word "re-shoots"...

Shock: Additional shooting, we should say...
Zombie: Yeah, the movie tested so well in New York that Weinstein was said, "I believe in this movie so much, if there's anything you felt you didn't get and you want to get it, I'll give you the money to go do it." Which is the greatest thing because there's always something more you want. The weird thing about movies I don't think people really understand is that it's like a puzzle put together out of sequence. And it's not until you're done that you go "Shit, if only we had done that," but we didn't because certain things come alive that are unexpected. It's not like you have a script that's your blueprint and you make it exactly what's there. Sometimes things change. Characters might become more important than they originally were, certain characters become less important. One of the things is the character Danny Trejo plays resonated so much stronger than I anticipated. There was one more scene with his character that I needed to resolve with him and it always felt like it was missing and that's one of the things we went back to get.

Shock: Did the picture become even more violent? There are rumors of more deaths.
Zombie: Not really, it was like we'd do some violent thing, but it'd turn into something else. A lot of it is character pieces to connect things. As soon as someone hears we're shooting more people are like "They went back to shoot seven more bloody deaths!" Who makes this stuff up? It was so crazy, some of the stuff we went to shoot was so minor. Like Clint Howard's character calling from Smith's Grove to give the news of Michael Myers escaping. I restructured the timeline of the film and had originally shot those scenes during the day and I needed to shoot them at night because it didn't make sense within the timeline. Nobody had said you need more violence, you need more gore. The movie's fuckin' violent enough.

Shock: You're still in post-production, so how is composer Tyler Bates doing with the score? When we last spoke you said he was playing with a few ideas.
Zombie: Bates is doing good, that's been really tricky. It's been really tricky for everybody because it's been a constant thing of how much of the original stuff do we maintain so that it's cool? And how much do we throw away? It's been a fine line of it's in, it's out. I mean, all of the classic themes are in there, it's just how much do you use - as much as they strike up a feeling as soon as you hear it, you want to be able to strike up new sensations in people and it's hard to do that with cues that people have heard for thirty years, so it's been a tough balancing act for him.

Shock: Regarding the poster, is that something you designed yourself? Because I understand you like to have a hand in some of the marketing.
Zombie: I blurted out, "What if we did something like this?" And then they did it. They did a ton of posters and I hated everything. [laughs] I saw that one and was like, you know, I kinda like it! It might not work great as a tiny image, but as a poster, there's a lot of stuff to look. A lot of times you go to the theater and the posters are so simple, you can look at it for one minute and get it. Now, I like how you can stand there for five minutes and look at the poster. I like that it looks serious - it's not taking all of the lead actors' faces, airbrushing them perfectly and putting them in a descending order of appearance. It looks like a serious movie and that's what I'm happy about.

Shock: Has producer Malek Akkad been pressing you about a sequel?
Zombie: Malek says it, but I'm like there's no f**kin' way. [laughs] I don't know, I know Scout [Taylor-Compton, aka Laurie Strode] hasn't signed on for a sequel. There's no way I would do it because I approached this movie singular film unto itself. I don't give a shit about reinvigorating a franchise, that's all well and good because you have to make money but I just wanted to make a great film and that's all Carpenter wanted to do. Not make a series. If they make "Halloween" 2, 3, 4, 9000, I'm not gonna be involved. Because this film has such a great start and a great ending, to go, "Let's start it up again!" Would be, to me, "Oh, Jesus Christ."

Shock: And what is happening with your animated project "El Superbeasto"?
Zombie: Nothing really much. They're still animating "Superbeasto." Once I started "Halloween" I told those guys I have to walk away because I can't split my time between two things. I mean, that started when I was on "Rejects" and it's now just sitting on a shelf waiting for me to finish "Halloween."

[MacGuffin]

New Trailer here.

[Stefen]

You guys moved this to Now Showing QUICK. I was looking in grapevine like a dickhead.

Anyways, theres a workprint out of this already. Just has the time code. I'll sacrifice myself and get back to you!

[MacGuffin]

You guys moved this to Now Showing QUICK.

I always move threads the Monday before their release date.

[davidchili]

ugh, this looks terrible.

and i loved house of 1000 corpses and devil's rejects.

i'm very upset about this and even more upset that i'm going to help make this a hit by seeing it in theaters...

you can make it uo by making some pirate copies ...uh...with your cellphone cam

[Stefen]

Spoilers

So, I've only watched the first half hour of this, but so far, it's not very good. Zombie made a huge mistake in trying to make Michael Myers as a child a sympathetic character instead of a faceless terror. This little fat kid keeps getting picked on by kids at school, then his sister won't take him trick or treating so he turns into a psycho. Theres a scene where he's sitting on the porch in his costume watching the other kids trick or treat and it starts playing that Nazareth song "Love hurts" and I about died laughing. I hope that was supposed to be a funny moment and not a serious moment.

Michael Myers was scary because he was anonymous. All you knew about him was the mask so when you throw a face on him, all of a sudden he isn't as scary, especially when it's the face of some loser fat kid with a Kiss t-shirt.

Hopefully it gets better when he becomes an adult.

I forgot to add that it really pisses me off how Rob Zombie continues to white trash his films up. Mike Myers mom is a white trash stripper, and his whole family looks and acts like they eat mayonaise sandwiches. Why glorify these people? They are the worst kind.

[The Red Vine]

SPOILERS

Hopefully it gets better when he becomes an adult.

It doesn't.

I was impressed with some things in "The Devil's Rejects", but when I heard Zombie was doing another Halloween, I was less than excited. But I tried to stay positive in hopes of him doing something fresh with this awful franchise. He doesn't do jack fucking shit.

So we get a little backstory to Michael, who cares? All of his victims in the beginning are stereotypes that Zombie seems to think are funny. But it's already a very tired cliche for him. The movie is just a relentless series of brutal killings, nothing more. It's predictable all the way down to the villain being shot down but isn't really dead. No character development. No fresh story. Just lots and lots of jump scenes and violence, which Zombie doesn't even bother to comment on. Disturbing that this is his idea of entertainment.

I could keep going but why bother. It's the worst kind of movie. Best to erase it from my memory.

[john]

Pretty useless.

Though, there were a few things that I thought were visually exciting, and they were usually sexual in nature. (so, ah... sexually exciting, I guess.)

It somehow took itself too seriously and not seriously enough.

As laughable as I imagined the whole "Love Hurts" montage to be, and it was, I really liked the footage of Sheri-Moon Zombie stripping.... or, least, "dancing erotically", as there wasn't much stripping to be seen.

Also, the nipples on Michael's sister... I think Zombie cast her entirely due to her nipples. They were good nipples. Good, cinematic nipples.

There are some gloriously smutty moments in this and in The Devil's Rejects. Hopefully Zombie will eventually convince a studio to finance a Russ Meyer-esque sexploitation film That, I'd be excited for.

Better than his Gindhouse trailer, though.

[squints]

Good, cinematic nipples.

marquee maybe? brilliant.

[Pubrick]

brilliant.

not even.

[Stefen]

I never finished it, and it seems I made the right choice.

Why are people slobber knobbing all over these hacks like Zombie, Eli Roth, and now Tarantino and Rodriguez?

I didn't think ANYTHING Zombie ever did was good, and I remember a time when no one bought House of 1000 corpses because it was so bad and he was showing clips of it at his shows. How he got clout for Devils Rejects is beyond me.

In Roth's case, Cabin Fever was alright, but nothing to write home about. It was just a good idea executed horribly. The Hostel films are the same way. A GREAT idea gone horribly wrong.

Tarantino and R-Rod fucked up bad with Grindhouse. How are you gonna spend $40 million on making something look like it cost less than a million? Is that not the shittiest idea ever? Let's spend alot of money to make something look like it didn't cost alot of money? It would have been awesome if they made those films with the same shitty cameras, props, effects, etc from the 70's instead of modernizing them by making them look outdated. As I've said before, Grindhouse is like the hot topic of Grindhouse flicks. $50 for a brand new Led Zeppelin tour t-shirt that is already pre faded and made to look like it's old and you got it at a thrift store. Who's idea was that?

[pumba]

well put

[MacGuffin]

Zombie making 'Halloween' sequel
Dimension to release director's 'H2' in October
Source: Variety

Dimension Films and Rob Zombie are teaming for another chapter of "Halloween," and he's racing to scare up the pic for release in October.

Zombie will write and direct "H2," the sequel to his 2007 reinvention of the John Carpenter horror classic. Production will begin in March.

The new film picks up right as the first remake ended, following the aftermath of Michael Myers' murderous rampage through the eyes of the sister he hunted.

Zombie said it won't resemble the original second installment, as the "House of 1000 Corpses" helmer continues to take the franchise in different directions.

Zombie took Carpenter's original and stamped it with an original storyline that treated Myers as a clinical psychopath. The film grossed $60 million domestically in 2007.

Zombie had told Dimension chief and TWC co-chairman Bob Weinstein he wanted nothing to do with a sequel. But just like the franchise's villain, Zombie was compelled to come back.

"I was so burned out. (But) I took a long break, made a record and I got excited again," Zombie said. "Now, we'll be hauling ass, and that's the problem making a movie called 'Halloween': If you come out Nov. 1 or after, nobody cares. If it was called anything else, I'd be fine."

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but the first one came out in august, remember?  you asshole.