Raimi, Sam (The Grudge)
Dread Central Staff
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I had the pleasure of sitting down one on one with the very busy and very talented Mr. Sam Raimi this weekend where he was out promoting the new film, The Grudge. We spoke about the film and his future in horror as well as all of these pesky rumors about everyone’s favorite S-Mart employee, Ash. Here is how it went down.
Sean Clark: So do you feel any connection to director Takashi Shimizu, having remade your own film three times from Within the Woods to Evil Dead 2?
Sam Raimi: Yeah, I do. I feel like he is my brother in horror. I think that he is a great filmmaker. Yes, I feel very connected to him because all he is working with when he makes his horror films is a camera, actors and simple settings. It’s all about what he does with the camera, how he tells a story, how he puts the shots together, how he constructs the narrative – and he does it brilliantly. He has very little to work with but he makes it very effective for the audience. I compare myself to him and I find similarities in the way that when I made my horror films I also had very little to work with. Just the camera, actors and tried to make the best with it that I could.
SC: Have you always been a fan of Japanese horror or was there something about The Grudge that appealed to you?
SR: I was a fan the moment I saw Kurosawa’a Throne of Blood, his Macbeth. The shadows brought up some classic feelings of horror imagery to me that I had seen in the Universal horror films years before, but I didn’t know enough about the genre to be influenced by it. The first straight Japanese horror film I think I ever saw was Ju-on, but I have always like Godzilla. [laughs]
SC: Were there any challenges taking a Japanese horror film and making it work for the American audience?
SR: This is our first attempt at trying to take a Japanese film and make it into something the American audience can get into. I’ll tell you what we tried but the jury isn’t in yet. We tried to replace the actors with English speaking American actors because usually the movies that are successful here in the States that people really get into are those with American actors or British actors. They don’t really go to see a lot of movies, except in L.A. and New York I think, or maybe one or two other cities like Chicago where there are foreign born, with foreign speaking actors. That’s just the culture we are. So we tried to make it acceptable to the American audience by replacing them with really good American actors, while at the same time hanging on to what made the film unique and not try to make it some American film. We hung onto the Japanese director, the very talented Takashi Shimizu, who I think is a master of suspense. I hadn’t seen a film until Ju-On where I thought, man, I need to go back to school to study how to make a horror film again, because this guy has so outdone me, that really taught me so many things about new ways to do it that I’d been shamed. Either I go back to school or I start producing his pictures. [laughs] We wanted to do the translation by replacing them with American actors to make it more accessible. Hang on the strengths of the picture, which was its Japanese cultural background. We didn’t want to make it a story of spirits in America.
SC: Was there any resistance by the studio to use the original director rather than some hot shot American director?
SR: Well, Rob Tapert and I have a company called Ghost House Pictures and I think there usually would be that resistance, we simply didn’t make it the studio’s decision. It was our decision because we have our own financing, and then once we were making the movie we let the studio know that if they wanted to be a partner this was how the movie was going to be made.
SC: It has been a while since you have directed a horror film. Do you miss it and would you return to the genre? Or are you afraid that at this point in your career directing a horror film could hurt you?
SR: I’ve never really considered my career, you know. I’ve always made the choices without a regard for what was going to happen afterwards. I just always tried to make that film which I most believed in that I could and realistically get the financing for, because for many years up until very recently, I’ve had trouble like all filmmakers, ninety percent of them, getting the money to make a movie. So I don’t think about it hurting my career and I would love to return to horror. I really like horror films, good ones. A well-crafted picture is very exciting. However with this new company, Ghost House Pictures, that my partner Robert Tapert and I have it’s almost as much fun producing these pictures as it is directing them. I still get to go into the audiences and I know that the big scare is coming or a freak out moment and I can kind of giddily wait in the back and watch it affect the audience.. So it may be that I don’t need to return to horror films, but I just don’t know yet.
SC: I think maybe a lot of genre fans felt that perhaps you started Ghost House to be able to safely make horror films without possibly hurting your Hollywood career. It’s a way to produce horror films without having to direct them. You have people like Peter Jackson making films like Lord of the Rings and I really doubt you will ever see him make another film like Dead Alive again…
SR: Yeah. It is a way to get back involved with what I love: really spooky, fun, outrageous sequences of terror through a well-crafted horror film. I do love that. I’m just really not able to return to it because I have to finish up my Spider-Man story. Which will take about two and a half years and I couldn’t really wait that long to get back into it.
SC: Tell me a little bit about Ghost House.
SR: Ghost House is a new company that I formed with my old friend and partner Rob Tapert and with a new partner Joe Drake from Senator Films. It’s a company that just wants to make fun, suspenseful, scary, popcorn horror films. We don’t really want to make super realistic types of horror films. For instance we really wouldn’t want to make one about a serial killer or something too real. It’s more about fantasy and fantastic images. The kind of movie we would really, really love to go see. That’s the goal. I hope to make out of it a new American version of what Hammer horror films was years ago.
SC: What is your relationship with Senator Films and how did they get involved?
SR: We were looking for a partner who could take the movies that we wanted to make, and through their pre-sales operation provide a great deal of financing for us. That way we could determine without the studios what the movie was gonna be. Because a lot of the movies we wanna make are not what the studios would make. If we can get the financing and the script and all the elements together without the studios, usually then they’ll jump aboard and we won’t have to make changes. We will have creative control, which we do. Columbia Pictures wasn’t really allowed to have control on The Grudge. Not that I mind Columbia Pictures because they have been wonderful, but just in general we want to have control over these films because we think our take on it is not usually what a studio’s take on a horror film would be.
SC: Your first Ghost House production, Boogeyman, has recently been reported as going from a theatrical release to going direct-to-video. What happened there?
SR: I’m not sure and I don’t know if it really is going direct to video. Someone else told me they read that somewhere. I was told that Screen Gems is releasing Boogeyman in, I think, February.
SC: How do you feel about a decade later a new Darkman action figure coming out?
SR: I didn’t know there was one!
SC: There is. It’s coming out from SOTA Toys and it looks phenomenal.
SR: You’re kidding! I’m very excited that they care enough to bother with it. There never was one right?
SC: Not an action figure, no.
SR: Was there anything else?
SC: There was a resin model kit.
SR: There was?!!
SC: Yeah I used to have it.
SR: I wish I had one. Was it any good or not?
SC: It was decent.
SR: I think those old Aurora kits, those were great. Actually the Marvel kits I’m talking about. They were really cool. I think then they reissued them fairly recently.
SC: One thing I really loved from Darkman was when Tony Gardner had Alterian Studio’s Ghost Factory and made those masks.
SR: Oh yeah!
SC: I got both of those.
SR: You do? I do too!
SC: Those are very cool.
SR: I thought so too.
SC: In regards to Freddy vs Jason vs Ash how were you approached to do it? Would you even want to do it or would you rather do an Evil Dead 4 or neither?
SR: [Long pause as he thinks about it]
SC: It seems like the fans are dying for some more Ash.
SR: Are they? (Laughs) When they first mentioned it I just didn’t think that they belonged in the same world, you know? But then I heard that Sean Cunningham was going to direct it and I spoke to him briefly. I really admire his work very much and they had high hopes for it, but it was a situation where I think if I was able to maintain control over the character, creative control over it, I think it would have been okay, but I didn’t want to be in a position where I was countering the wishes of a director. So I just felt that I didn’t want to be in that situation because I really respect this director, so I thought it was best for everybody if we didn’t do it. Although I’m sure it would have been good that was just really the situation.
SC: In regards to 30 Days of Night do you have any director in mind yet?
SR: Not yet. We just had the first draft screenplay written by Stu Beattie who did Collateral, as well as a draft of another horror film for us called Scarecrow, which now the Pang Brothers are working on over in Hong Kong. We just turned it into the studio and they are very happy with it so that portends good things for its start of production. But no we haven’t even had a meeting yet about a director.
SC: What is the status of Scarecrow and what is it about?
SR: Well like I said Stu Beattie also wrote that but the Pang Brothers are rewriting it. Sorry Stu! (Laughs) So I think basically it’s still this story of a family that moves to this farm. Their on their last legs, they had some problems with their business and they are going to make this last attempt to make it financially on this small farm. The woman in the relationship has some experience. She grew up on a farm and the husband in the relationship is coming there with a lot of sense of failure and bitterness, but never the less they are able to start making things work. Not at first, but then they find this scarecrow and once they stand it up the birds are scared away and the crops start doing a little bit better. But it’s really not a good thing to have found that scarecrow. [laughs]
Dread Central would like to thank Sam Raimi for taking the time to give us a one-on-one interview!
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