Renegade Cinema took part in a conference call interview with Evil Dead director Fede Alvarez about his upcoming horror movie and the difficulties in remaking a beloved classic. Here is a look at what Alvarez had to say about his remake of Evil Dead.
Jane Levy was very impressive in her role in the film. How did you extract such a gruesome and grueling performance from your cast?
Thank you I mean everything starts of course in the pages. It is very hard for an actor to give a good performance if the script sucks, right? So everything starts in the pages and we put a lot of love in the characters in general, and we really care about giving them stories that weren’t necessarily related to the supernatural story. Each one of them they have their journey that is not only plot driven but character driven.
On the shooting itself, I think my job was kind of exposing them to real things all the time. That is why we decided to make the film 100% practical and not use the CGI and all that. It wasn’t just because I love horror films that look real, but also because I knew that, in a way, the actors were going to be exposed to real things. That is why I decided also to shoot the film in a real forest.
For instance, the first instinct is always to just build it on the stage and I thought that was going to be a betrayal to the spirit of the original film, so I felt we had to go and be in the woods and spend long nights in the woods. Everybody was freezing to death but that is the way I think the movie should be done.
And also for the actors at the end of the day, you know, the performances, they were not faking it all the time. You know when they are scared, sometimes I would surprise them with real jumps. Sometimes I kept them in the dark about some scenes and some moments of the movie so they could react in a natural way. I was really pushing them to have the real experience, you know because I knew that if they were having a real experience that will translate to their performances.
After coming from a do-it-yourself short film background with limited budgets, talk about how you dealt with having a large budget on your first feature length film, a budget that was even bigger than the original Evil Dead.
Well, it is never a problem to have a big budget. But even when there is a big budget, we have to be very resourceful and have to come up with ideas to be able to make the movie look even bigger. I am a big fan of movies, but I am an even bigger fan of filmmaking itself. I fell in love since I was very young and I always loved to learn the craft, every aspect of it, not as a director, I never thought of myself as a director, it’s just like I was doing everything that was film related.
I was able to do music for films in the past, I even played the piano on the soundtrack of this film in some parts, so it is something that I love, every aspect of the filmmaking – except acting, I would never be able to do that. The rest, I think I did it all. So I think it was really helpful that, when it came down to time to make the movie, it just helps if the director knows a little bit of everything, so when it came down to time to do visual effects and all that, that is a field that I know so it really helped me a lot.
It makes it very easy sometimes. You ask how it is to come from a short, a $200 short, to a movie like it is hard. My answer is that the hard part is to make a $300 alien invasion movie with no money and nothing. That is the hard part. Then when you have the resources to make something, it is always awesome and its always a pleasure in Hollywood to have the chance to be surrounded by amazing actors and a great team.
Click here for Page 2 of the Fede Alvarez Interview
How difficult was it to come in and remake such a beloved horror classic?
Regarding the challenge of remaking a classic, I don’t know, I was such a fan of the original and Sam Raimi’s movies in general. I think that is one of the reasons that Sam gave me the movie, because I know that all that universe and most of my friends are like freaks of horror and all that, so I know my audience, I know who I am making this film for.
I always felt great about it, and I knew I wasn’t rewriting it. I wasn’t overwriting it or anything. I wasn’t trying to make a movie that was trying to take the place of another. I just wanted to make a new story. That is why I decided to go with different characters, I decided to go with a different set up, I mean this set up is completely different. But we were very careful and I think we did, with my friend, my co-writer [Rodo Sayagues] – he is my best friend since we were kids – together I think we did a good job of bringing the ideas of the original and fitting them in this new story without feeling forced, without feeling that we were just trying to put those ideas there.
And so, that is why there wasn’t pressure. I always felt that it was just awesome to be making an Evil Dead movie and to be a part of this family and making a movie that is called Evil Dead, you know. I was just always thinking about the cool side and the great side and the honor of making one and not the scary part of the pressure.
Other than the obvious reference to the Raimi original, what else did you draw from in order to bring your vision to the screen and make this your own work rather then something simply derivative of the original?
Well, Sam was really pushy with the fact that he wanted me to make my own film. Even when I was trying to bring more elements from the original film, he would be very insistent with that idea, he was like “Fede, I want you to make your film, this has to be your film.” He was really pushy and he really wanted me to have my own film, so he really gave us all the freedom to do it. He never forced me to do something that I didn’t want, he never really forced me to put in something that I didn’t want to, he didn’t make me shoot something that I didn’t want to, that I didn’t believe in.
They were the best producers you can ask for because they gave me all the freedom. Everything comes down to the fact that he wanted this to be an author-film, he wanted the film to come from the writer-director that would have all the freedom to work or to do whatever you wanted to do because that is the spirit of the original film. He wanted to make sure that that translated into this one.
As for ideas, I think you know naturally every time you write something. As a director it is tricky, but as a writer it is easy because you create the story. As a writer, I think you take ideas from all other good stuff you have seen or read in the past, from every experience you had. Every movie is, every creation is, a huge rip off of a hundred other things, blended together that way you create something new.
Of course, we took a lot from The Exorcist, I think it is just a quintessential possession movie and it has the best ideas. It is kind of the Bible of the possession movie, so there is mythology from that movie in every possession movie, and we took a lot from there. I think The Omen was a good reference to me as a story of how you make the audience believe in the supernatural. You have a character in Mr. Thorn that doesn’t believe in anything, a politician that would never believe in the occult, and at the end you have the guy ready to kill his son. So in that journey, you are with him all the time. That was a great example of storytelling, how to make somebody believe in the supernatural when they don’t believe in anything.
On the technique side I think Bram Stoker’s Dracula, the one Francis Ford Coppola directed. I think that was a great example of how to make a movie with techniques of the times, and that is something I wanted to do with this film. I wanted a lot of very old school techniques, very old school, but they look amazing and I made the movie to be timeless. Those movies don’t age, they don’t age at all. You can watch them today and they are still relevant, still amazing, because they were conscious of not using top of the line technology to make the film. That was something that I did not want to do in this film. For that same reason, to keep the movie as timeless as possible, and make sure the movie doesn’t age, I tried not to use CGI. So that is a few of the movies that we took inspiration from, and of course all the Evil Dead movies.
Click here for Page 3 of the Fede Alvarez Interview
How much did Diablo Cody contribute to the screenplay, because at the end of the film, there was no screen credit for her?
She did a great job in some points. When I finished my last draft with Rodo, we asked for an American writer to come in and just do some dialogue, because we thought there was no way we were ever going to create realistic American dialogue, just because it is not our first language. She is a big Evil Dead fan and she came on board to do that, and she did polish some dialogue a little bit, but without changing the scenes or changing any of the characters or the plot.
I think at the end we ended up using very little of it, so they kind of, the WGA, they have a jury and they kind of decide on that and she didn’t get a credit. We just didn’t use enough of her jargon.
Early reviews have praised this as being one of the goriest films in a while and maybe even in all time, can you talk a little bit about any trouble you had with the MPAA about ratings?
It was hard, but they were very helpful in a lot of things. Sometimes the MPAA can drive you crazy by not telling you why the movie is getting a bad rating and the rating you don’t want, and sometimes they are very precise. In this case they were very precise with us. They said there was this and this and that, like five notes on the first cut. Thank God we didn’t have to get rid of those, we just had to get rid of five frames, ten frames in some moments. You know, honestly, I think they helped us to make a better movie, because when they tell you ok you can show this for 25 frames, you know you want to make sure that those 25 frames that you see are the very best ones you have. So they ended up helping us to have a sharper cut in a way.
When you first took the job, were you more scared of impressing Sam Raimi and Bruce Campbell, or the horror community as a whole?
I would say neither, I would say myself. I am pretty demanding with myself and my work and I always put a lot of pressure on myself. I try to do the best job that I can every time. I am quite obsessive with my work as a director, a writer and everything. So during the whole process, I was the toughest one to please in many levels. Even when I had the first draft done, they loved it, Sam was in love with the first draft and Rob Tapert loved it, and I was still believing it wasn’t 100% ready and it wasn’t good enough. Then we did a second draft, and they loved it too, and I was still believing it wasn’t good enough and then I cut the movie and I finished my first cut and I hated it. I showed it to Sam Raimi and he loved it, and so really the hardest person to please was myself.
I guess every time I finish something, I am really, really demanding with myself. I am a Sam Raimi fan, and I am an Evil Dead fan, but I wouldn’t say I am a horror fan because I don’t watch every horror film out there anymore, but I used to be. So I knew at the end of the day that, if I was pleasing myself, if I was making a movie that I would love, I knew people out there were going to love it, that was something that was the best advice Sam gave me at the beginning, which was “Fede you have to make the movie you want to see in the theaters, don’t try to make the movie you think I want to see, don’t try to make the movie that you think the audience wants to see, you have to make the movie that you want to go and see in the theater. That is the only way because your instinct is the only thing you will have with you.”
And it was so right and so true, at the end of the day you have to be truthful to your feelings and your desires and your taste. At the end of the day, what you hope, is going to be that the audience out there feels just like you. And every art form figures like that, you have to do it kind of for yourself or what you believe is cool. You cannot do something trying to please somebody, because that feels and sounds like failure.
I know you guys shot on a ridiculously grueling schedule and did practical effects, so I was just curious, what was the most difficult scene you had to shoot and why?
A lot of things were so tough in this movie. Probably I would say everything in the cellar with Natalie and Mia on top of her, the cutting of the tongue, the blood kiss, all those things, they were so tough for the actresses. And you know, as a director you try to convince everyone that they want to do this, this is the right way, and that was one of those days where my idea of going 100% practical was kind of falling apart a little bit because what we were shooting was looking so bad.
I remember the first time we did a first shot, with the tongue cut in half, and we were puppeteering the fake tongue, and it looked embarrassing on set. But then you have to be courageous and keep going and going, cause everyone is going “I told you we should have gone with the CG tongue.” You have to believe in your vision, and thank God we managed to pull it off. And then, on the edit team, we ended up cutting away and it ended up looking great. It was something, it was one of those that really took a lot of job to make, to make all those moments look good and feel right.