After being committed for 17 years, Michael Myers, now a grown man and still very dangerous, is mistakenly released from the mental institution (where he was committed as a 10 year old) and he immediately returns to Haddonfield, where he wants to find his baby sister, Laurie. Anyone who crosses his path is in mortal danger.
BD: So there was a misconception about the music…
RZ: Yeah I don’t know how that started, and I don’t care how it started. You know what the music is? Undecided at this point. We always wanted to use pieces of the original score, kind of redone to fit our picture. But we haven’t done it yet, so I don’t like to lock myself in and say we’re definitely going to do anything. Because one thing you can’t judge is music against the picture, until you’re in the editing room cutting. But more than likely we’re going to use pieces of the classic themes.
BD: In the original it was never revealed that Laurie was Michael’s sister, how did that effect how you went about the remake?
RZ: This is a funny thing: I love the original, I’ve always loved the original movie, and still do, so whenever I discuss it, it seems like I don’t like it because I’m trying to change things. But the point was with this, I wanted to make everything significant. You know how in the original, things are just random? He robs the hardware store and happens to steal that mask… nothing really relates back to everything. You know, he just randomly discards his clothes exactly at the one booth in a hundred mile radius where Dr Loomis decides to stop at… and finds the matchbook on the side of the road… So everything was coincidental, and I wanted everything to relate more; giving him a purpose to break out and DO something. Because you know, it was “Babysitter Murders” and it became “Halloween”. So I wanted it to be more than just coincidence.
BD: Michael has a room in the sanitarium where he creates a bunch of masks, what is your reasoning for him creating masks?
RZ: First thing I wanted to start with is: “What is the reality of someone like Michael Myers?” And the reality is he would be a true psychopath, he has no concept of what he’s doing. He’ll kill his sister, and then talk about how much he loves his sister. That’s the reality of a psychopath, they’re not always scary, sometimes they’re charming and funny, maybe it’s someone who murders people; maybe it’s someone who just obsessively does not feel guilty about ripping off elderly people from retirement funds. That’s psychotic behavior. So when he does all these things, when he has the mask on is when he’s usually doing bad things, and when he doesn’t have the mask on he’s usually pretty pleasant and wonderful, which keeps creating conflict.
It’s hard to explain but when you see young Michael, he’s very charismatic and likeable, and you start projecting that onto adult Michael. So even when you see Tyler, who’s like four feet taller, he still takes on the essence of the kid. I wanted the mask be just the way he hides. Throughout his time in the sanitarium he just has a series of masks, which is how he communicates, because he doesn’t talk for 15 years. So you have a lead character that doesn’t speak or show his face, which was fine in the original because it was all new. But I needed to take him out of the shadows and make him more significant, so that’s why I created the mask thing: to carry that through more.
BD: When he’s chasing Laurie what are his motives, is he actually trying to kill her?
RZ: That’s the thing; you have to draw your own conclusions as to what he’s actually doing, because adult Michael is kind of like a bull in a china shop in his best moments. I wanted to create a situation where at the end of the movie it’s not so clear cut what he was doing, Was he coming home to kill her? Was he coming home to find her because he loves her? You’re not really sure, and I think that’s more interesting.
BD: Do you set up a sequel, even though you said you won’t return for one?
RZ: No. But they can make a sequel out of anything. We were joking the other day, in the next one, they can get Michael’s body accidentally put in a truck going to NASA and he gets shot into space and somehow he’s on the moon, killing… (laughs) Whatever. They can do anything. But I haven’t done anything on this movie worrying about a sequel, because one thing’s for sure: all good movies do not have a sequel in mind. Whether it was the original Halloween or anything, they weren’t thinking about sequels, they figured out ways to make them happen. But you can’t try to make any kind of statement that’s going to have an impact on your audience at the end of your movie if you’re trying to set up the next one. In fact, when people do that you’re like, “Gah, you made me watch two hours only to give me a big ‘Fuck you, come back next summer’ at the end?” The ending to me is the ending. That’s not to say someone else won’t try to figure out how to make part 2, but it’s not going to be me. I was just worried about making one movie that was enjoyable and contained.
BD: Did you shoot multiple endings for this?
RZ: I never shoot multiple anything. You have to know what you’re attempting to do. Movies with multiple endings are always horrible, because other people get involved and people start weighing in with their thoughts suddenly people think its like open to committee where everyone’s like ‘well I think you should do this!” And you just have to be like: This is the ending and that’s the ending. You know, like Rejects: they died! I shot em, I killed at the end. I didn’t have one where they got away.
BD: Have you looked past this movie to what you’re working on next?
RZ: I’m not looking to the next thing; I don’t know what it will be. This just came up and turned into something that was impossible to pass up, so I just went with it. Who knows? I was looking at the calendar and realized that it exactly a year ago on Friday that I actually started the script; so it’s been a pretty fast process to starting the script to being done with the movie.
BD: Has John Carpenter been here at all, have you talked to him about this at all?
RZ: I talked to him before I started the movie, right before the news about the movie broke, just because I wanted him to the be the first person to know, so it didn’t seem insulting. And then I talked to him once in preproduction, and that was it. He’s cool.
BD: Was there a conscious effort to make Laurie Strode appear younger?
RZ: No, she’s just that age, I figured like, what a novel concept: cast a high school girl as a high school girl. (Laughs)
BD: There’s been a lot of talk about multiple colored Myers masks, is that just when he’s in the Sanitarium or does it come out when he escapes?
RZ: There are different things that happen. The classic mask is the mask in this movie, but there’s other things created in middle section that I don’t want to give away.
BD: There were rumors about a tape recorder, is that something that’s still in the story?
RZ: No, that’s not in the story anymore. It was just young Michael, it was never adult Michael. Whatever version of the script that anyone ever read was so old and outdated that anything anyone ever commented on was so long gone or changed it wasn’t even worth commenting on.
BD: The fans: Do you at any point feel like you have to win them over?
RZ: The only thing that’s going to win them over is if the movie’s good. What else can you do, right? I mean that’s all you can do; that’s the only thing that’s going to win someone over.
BD: It had to have been a lot of work for you to step back and ignore all the comments…
RZ: What I did was just ignore everything; I haven’t looked at a website or anything in six months. Someone would email something and say “Check this out” and I’d just delete it and write back “Don’t send me anything, I don’t care.” Because you can’t care, it’s all nonsense. I can’t keep responding to complete nonsense all the time. Life’s too short.
And, you know, people are only saying all that stuff because they’re excited. And it’s great that they’re excited, but you can’t keep up with the rumor and speculation and insanity. It’s great how everyone has a “friend close to the source” who knows something and I’ve never read anything true!
The only thing I commented on was something I read by accident, someone emailed to me and I didn’t even know it was in the body of the letter. It was saying that I was so mad about something that somebody at Aintitcoolnews said, so I had to post “I’m not mad at anyone and I don’t even know what they said”. But I hate that people are thinking I’m running around storming about things when I’m not.
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Iniciado por nogales
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Produce cierto recelo. Espero que ello no condicione al film de Rob Zombie (difícil será).
