chiller blog

Posted Jul 20, 09 03:15 PM

The Blair Witch Prospers

Someone needs to publish the Coolsville Dictionary of Cinema. Were it to exist, under the definition of "Cultural Phenomenon" - see also "The Quintessential Rags-to-Riches Story" - you'd find the entry for The Blair Witch Project.

Harrrrrrrd to believe. A decade ago this July, the most anomalic lightning-in-a-bottle blew out its cork. The chilling pseudo-doc tale of three amateur filmmakers who literally took a hike and stayed there bulldozed beyond the art house circuit, raking in a quarter-billion in global box office. (Thereby ensuring The Blair Witch Project's only competition on the Guinness record for most successful film cost-to-profit ratio would have to come from an iPhone.) Respected critics like Rolling Stone's Peter Travers said that it did for the woods what Jaws did for oceanic toe-dips. Lauds flowed in from the Producers Guild of America to the Independent Spirit's... but, for the life of me, I don't "get" the slice of Smart Apple Pie from the Golden Raspberry Awards. For sheer numbers, parodies dueled with Internet posts debating the mythology as truth or fiction. At least those out-populated the success-must-be-punished backlash that followed The Blair Witch Project, for this astonishingly ingenious work I heralded then as I do now: As a modern horror classic.

Ten years later, CHILLER strolled down The Road Few Have Ever Traveled. Our fellow passengers: Blair Witch directors/writers/editors Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sanchez, producers Robin Cowie and Gregg Hale, co-producer Michael Monello and production designer Ben Rock. Let's hope one of them, at least, brought some extra batteries this time...

Chiller: Thanks, gentlemen. Let's get this little nugget out of the way: Yes, all of us did attend film school at the University of Central Florida. Any memories, fond or not?

Ben: Back then, it was kind of like a laid-back conservatory where you could try out whatever crazy ideas so long as you paid for it. The gear was a little old - nonlinear editing was like a thing from the future.

Mike: That first year, they didn't want to keep the edit room (a bunch of Steenbecks in a trailer) open all night...so they would force everyone to go home. Someone would hide underneath a machine then open the doors for all of us to edit through the night. After a week, they gave up that policy.

Robin: I remember shooting a short called 3RD on a Match. Ed was the director of photography. 80-person crew, Panavision cameras, Chapman cranes. We were blowing up a Vietnamese set that we built. Completely out of control.

Chiller: There's so much written about The Blair Witch Project. Let's not rehash. Let's assume our audience has seen your film. But seriously, is there anyone in your lives who hasn't?

Gregg: My three year-old-daughter and nine-month old son.

Ben: Some people hate shakycam movies. They were like, "Ben, you're my friend, but I can't sit through an all-handheld movie."

Dan: Everyone close to me has seen it...I may quiz them just to make sure.

Chiller: Mike Monello and I caught up over lunch - probably 1997-98? At the time, he pitched what would become Blair Witch: Actors improvising in the woods, finding note cards with instructions on them. My reaction was a glazed-over "...huh?" What were some of the reactions behind the NOs you received from finance meetings? Did you ever hear back from people who turned you down?

Gregg: We tried raising a comparatively large sum to shoot in a more traditional manner. In a precursor to how we marketed the film, we made a video for potential investors that told the back-story of the footage being found as if it really happened. People totally bought it...then said "no".

After we got to Sundance, I called my Mom and asked if she and my stepdad wanted to buy a share in the film. They passed - they needed to buy a new riding lawnmower. They call it "the most expensive lawnmower in history."

Chiller: Different sources list your budget anywhere from $22,000 to $60,000. No doubt there had to be deferments. So what's the official price tag?

Gregg: The actual out-of-pocket hard cost of the film that was ACCEPTED into Sundance was $22K. The film that was SHOWN and SOLD at Sundance was around $160K... the difference being a sound mix, a transfer to a 35mm print, and the costs of mounting an effective campaign at a major film festival (travel, hotels, posters, promotional materials, PR, etc.).

Ben: The guys DID pay me. $300 a week (plus points)!

Chiller: The first cut of the film reportedly ran two and a half hours. What deleted scenes were painful to see excised? Will there be a restored directors' version?

Gregg: It wasn't so much about losing scenes as it was just really brutally tightening EVERYTHING.

Dan: The musical numbers all had to go. Actually, we did have to lose a great scene where Mike Williams just lost his mind as Heather was taping him. It didn't drive the plot forward, but it was a brilliant performance.

Ben: While Ed and Dan were cutting, I became a projectionist/manager at a local art house theater. Whenever they wanted to screen the film, we hooked it up. So we packed the theater on a Saturday morning with people to see the full cut. My only thought after watching was, "This is NOT going to work". I was kind of despondent. I said something to a friend that day which I still say all the time: I never watch a film and wish it had been LONGER. Whatever Ed and Dan cut, they did the right thing.

Mike: I would love to see a transfer taken directly from the video master. The direct video images are much more immediate and work better on TV.

Chiller: To my understanding, modest Ben was a force behind the Internet marketing which built strong pre-awareness with an audience Artisan (and the rest of the studios) vastly underestimated. It also became the turning point for online film advertising. Care to share some details?

Gregg: Ben is a talentless boob. But seriously, folks, Ben contributed a lot to the mythology that we used on the site (and elsewhere). The lore aspect was very much a collaborative effort. The only person handling a major piece on their own was Ed: Actually programming the site (a fairly uncommon skill back then).

Ben: I was brought on before the film existed. Due to my obsession with the occult, I was asked to flesh out the back-story. The real genius behind the site was Ed - he really drove the web presence. I was heavily involved in writing the specials.

Dan: Ben was an ingenious help, not only with regards to production and "stickman" design, etc., but as Gregg said, contributing to and managing the mythology "bible" --

Mike: - which was key to keeping the story straight, from website and books to games, soundtracks CDs, etc.

Chiller: Dan and Ed graced the cover of TIME. Newsweek carried your movie on its cover. Some of you paneled at Cannes. Roger Ebert gave the film four stars. Take us through the euphoric moments.

Dan: I remember Gregg walking into my office with both magazines in hand. We literally laughed for like, five minutes. But one of the best moments was seeing our film parodied in MAD Magazine. That's when you know you've made it - when some writer is calling you "Saycheese" and "Myluck."

Gregg: We partied the hardest the night we we got into Sundance. That initial thrill was the most focused moment of joy for me.

Robin: There was this moment in Cannes at the party for Blair on the beach. All five of us had wandered through and met on the other side - almost in the ocean looking back at the silliness. There were all these people there - Spike Lee, Mel Gibson. The five of us just turned to each other and simply laughed.

I wrote a postcard to my wife the next morning. Our experience was unique - and yet almost a cliche. We risked everything and somehow it paid off. As an immigrant, it seemed to me the true fulfillment of the American dream.

Mike: The most amazing part was seeing how deeply people embraced the whole story, how people put up web sites and created little roles for themselves within the larger mythology. It completely changed the way I think about stories and how they are told. It made me look at the Internet as a more powerful tool for storytelling than any other.

Ben: Remember when I said I had points? When the first check came in and I was able to quit my job and pay off my student loans, that was euphoria. The flip side was the horrible question, "What do I do now?"

Kind of surreal. I had been out in LA for less than a year, and I didn't really have any contacts. Suddenly, I'm getting an agent, meetings all over town. I started getting work but was paranoid I was going to f*** it all up and never work again.

Chiller: Did you quietly join in on any sold-out screenings opening weekend? What were some of the highs, watching with an audience?

Ben: Quietly my ass! On opening weekend, it screened at the NuArt in Santa Monica. I was still temping. We bought our tickets in advance, and right after work my then-girlfriend/now wife Alicia and I went to the screening with a line that curved around the block. We met cinematographer Neal Fredericks and coordinator Matt Compton there. There's nothing like seeing a film you worked on with a paying audience.

Robin: My favorite was in Atlanta where many of the investors lived. It was the second showing for many of them. The first had been at my parents' house in Marietta. My dad watched it along with many of his friends that he had introduced to me and who had risked $5,000 here or $10,000 there. My dad did not enjoy the film and, right after the screening, started apologizing to all his friends. One of them, however, was an executive with Blockbuster. He stopped my dad and said, "I think you're wrong."

Chiller: When you heard the first wide weekend's returns come in - $29.2 million, second only to The Sixth Sense - what were you doing? I want some freak out moments here!

Dan: It was all monopoly money to me at that time.

Ed: I thought it was some kind of mistake. I realized we had a great indie hit the previous week when we went out on a few dozen screens and made crazy per-screen averages, but this was unheard of. We were competing with studio pictures!

I remember being at Movico Point Orlando Theaters with Gregg, signing posters and stuff on that first or second big week. The manager kept telling us that he was adding screens of BWP all night long. By the last showing, BWP was playing in over half of the 16 screens. It was crazy. It just kept selling out.

But with the overwhelming feeling of success came a bit of trepidation because I knew what a ridiculous one-time thing this was and how we were going to have to live with this big shadow over us for the rest of our careers. It was a hell of a blast while it lasted, though.

Ben: I went to work the following Monday. The big boss at the office said something like, "You're still working with us PLEEBS, huh?" But I had no idea what the future was going to hold.

One day, I just realized I didn't need to be there anymore. I told my boss and she basically gave me a hug and said "good luck!"

Chiller: OK, let's talk perks! What was your favorite? And what's it like going into the bank account and suddenly seeing lots of new figures?

Dan: We were all quite happy when Artisan delivered on our foosball table bet (after we broke the $10 million mark).

Ed: Flying first class. I'm 6'7", so being able to fly without that stress of fitting into the *%#-da#$ed seat was fantastic.

Dan: It didn't really hit home until my ATM balance amounted to more than next month's rent. It's certainly nice to make a living at this whacked out business, but I think we all agree - we weren't making Blair for the money. It was a labor of love that just happened to be the right film at the right time.

Robin: I was the only one with kids at the time. My son had just been born and my daughter was five. My wife and I did buy our first house together and pay off the cars. Mostly though, we put as much as we could in savings or investments.

Ed: Just the idea that we were now real filmmakers made my head spin. Everyone wanted to meet us. We had made it, and in a hell of a crazy way. While I knew that there were going to be consequences to all the hype, it didn't stop me from enjoying the moment. We were meeting great filmmakers, going to incredible parties, and everyone was treating us like we were geniuses. Little did they know.

Gregg: I still simply love having made a film that a lot of people have seen and, for the most part, enjoyed. I really like hearing peoples' stories of when they first saw the film and how it affected them. That's why I've always wanted to be a filmmaker: for the opportunity to move someone.

Ed has said that Blair just allowed us to go live normal lives a bit. I agree. We all sacrificed so much for so long that when we finally got the things most ‘normal' people in their mid-30s have, we dived in: We bought houses, got married, we started having kids. There's a great photo of Dan sitting on the floor, literally surrounded by this huge spread of bills, most of which were past due. The success of the film meant we could put that stuff behind us.

Ed: The money was fantastic - like a great burden had been lifted, like I would never have to worry about money again. Of course, that was wrong, and I honestly knew it. For a while, I let myself go - not crazy. That's about the time my Star Wars collecting addiction began...

Chiller: I consider myself a tough critic. I love horror. Blair Witch instills a prolonged sense of dread akin to watching a car crash in slow motion. Absolutely, it's a genre staple and was one of the Ten Best Films of 1999. Was there any push to score even a modest Oscar nomination?

Mike: Ed and Dan should have been nominated for editing. People have simply no idea how much of the film was built in the editing room: Dialogue constructed from different, different scenes - it's so seamless that I don't think people could see it at the time.

Gregg: I thought an editing nomination was a possibility. Heather, properly promoted and supported, could have been a Best Actress contender. But Artisan didn't see any financial upside.

Ben: Heather should have gotten a push. Artisan was so swamped with a blockbuster movie (and trying to get a sequel going) that they didn't mount a campaign. Also, the success was so out of scale with what the film cost that I don't know how kind Oscar voters would have been.

Dan: The whole Oscar "thing" is so political. Hard to imagine going up for a statue for Blair even though I felt the actors held their own with anyone nominated that year.

Robin: Winning the Independent Spirit Award was really the best tribute we could have dreamed of.

Chiller: The hand-held smash cut style of Blair Witch still resonates within horror. How does it feel to see films today - say, Cloverfield or Quarantine - that, well, look a LOT like what you initiated?

Dan: We've copyrighted that style and are currently suing the studios that produced Cloverfield, Quarantine, sections of Saving Private Ryan, and most documentaries produced in the woods between 1999 and 2006.

Ben: It's not like mock-dock-as-horror was invented with this film. Cannibal Holocaust and Man Bites Dog use the documentary conceit to tell a horror story. Even Night of the Living Dead has serious docu-overtones. I really loved Cloverfield and Quarantine. When people can harness the conceit, the performances and camerawork really make for compelling filmmaking.

Dan: Frankly, I'm amazed that we're credited with that particular style. We just popularized it.

Robin: First person films can be a really great genre. The challenge is to always explain the camera and why it is there. I think a hybrid technique where first person and traditional coverage is mixed could also be interesting.

Chiller: And what are you thoughts on all of the parodies? That's gotta be flattering. The Tony Blair Witch Project, The Blair Warner Project...

Gregg: The Scooby-Doo Project. Need I say more?

Mike: The references made by The Simpsons are highlights for me.

Robin: People are still showing me their own parodies today. It just seemed to strike a chord, "Well, if those guys could do it, so could I."

Ben: The parody world was glutted. When the dust settled, nobody was making them anymore. I'm happiest that BWP helped to put a pin in the parody world. I'd always rather see people put their energies into original works rather than latching onto pop culture's low-hanging fruit.

Many were complimentary, although a few (like The Blair Hype Project) were just mean. But I guess I remember that one so that must say something.

Chiller: Are you any good at the Blair Witch video game? What's the oddest piece of merchandising that got suggested?

Gregg: Those freakin' games were HARD. I never got good at them.

Ben: I'm a Mac person and all the games were PC.

Mike: If they had made a Blair Witch pinball machine I would have ruled that sucker. As for the odd merchandising, the rock music soundtrack CD to a film that famously had no music in it.

Robin: People were selling dirt from Burkitsville with homemade stick figures!

Ben: In Japan, I guess they love combining creepy and cuddly images. They made "The Blair Witch Missing Bear". It's a gray teddy with black handprints all over it and a red stickman snout –

Mike: And X'ed out eyes.

Ben: - A tag on its ear says, "Can you help me find my way?" Perfectly surreal. I have a bunch.

Gregg: The merchandising thing was last-minute and a little haphazard. The stupidest thing I have is a "Stickman" whiskey flask.

Dan: You can't get it through security at the airport.

Chiller: A backlash unfairly started, almost as if Blair Witch was being retaliated against for becoming a hit. The film generated $248 million globally. Accolades poured in from Cannes to the Independent Spirit Awards to the Producers Guild of America. And yet, simultaneously, Heather Donohue somehow gets singled out for Worst Actress by the Golden Raspberry Awards, some later reviews turned nasty, and Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2 quickly followed but got mishandled. As achieved artists, what was it like to navigate the Best of Times at the same time as the Worst of Times?

Gregg: The reviews before the hype got out of hand were almost universally very positive. After... not so much. Same for the audience reaction. After all the crazy exposure, I think a lot of people who were going to see the film were expecting Scream or The Sixth Sense and they were understandably disappointed. I tried to keep that all in perspective and it helps me take it in stride.

Dan: I try to take professional film critics with a grain of salt. It's still one person's opinion that, for some reason, gets paid for voicing it. With regards to the fans, much of the backlash was a reaction to the hype. It's unavoidable.

Ben: It's a good exercise in detachment. You can't take the success that seriously because if you do, then the backlash must be accepted as truth, as well. The problem with hype is that is leads, necessarily, to overexposure and in this case, you've got a film that wasn't really made for mainstream audiences suddenly going VERY mainstream. As a result, a lot people just didn't get it, which actually makes sense. The trick is to ignore the hype and keep moving forward - easier said than done. There was a cost and a benefit to the overexposure of the film. The cost was that the indie world turns it back on it at a certain point. The benefit: all of us have some kind of career now. It would be great to have that street cred AND financial success, but with the exception of a select few Guillermo Del Toro-type filmmakers, its really hard to have both.

Chiller: So you start taking studio meetings (and, safely, a lot of execs have rotated in ten years). What went down in these rooms that shocked you?

Dan: I wasn't aware that these guys didn't wear pants.

Of course, for a while, we were "flavor of the month" and took a lot of meetings. Got some projects off the ground, etc. It was great while it lasted, but now we're having to hammer it out like a lot of people, which in some way is good. When things come too easy you start to get lazy.

Robin: At this point, nothing shocks me about executives or the business in general. For the most part, there a lot of highly intelligent people who care very much about storytelling mixed with a lot of highly intelligent people who care very much about a profitable entertainment industry. Creative people tend to be emotional in general, and this mix of money, fame and difficult odds create the strange brew we call the film business.

Ed: It's called the "victory lap" in Hollywood. Everyone wanted to meet us, just to see if we floated or walked. I guess it's understandable because of what our film became. But it wasn't fun being treated like we weren't REAL filmmakers. A lot of jokes thrown our way about us knowing not what a real script was or did we know how a real film is made. Funny, the first five times you hear it.

What was kind of obvious in a lot of meetings was that the executives weren't really serious about actually hearing any ideas or making films with us in the future. I guess what was strange was the way some executives tried to minimize us. Like taking meetings with us just so they could say they did.

We did meet a lot of cool people, though. And I got to see Spielberg for the first time in person. I never got to meet him, but I walked by his office at Dreamworks and saw the back of his head, his little bald spot not ten feet from me. It was one of the best moments of the victory lap.

Chiller: Blair Witch 2 deserves its own question. I'll happily give you the floor to correct any misconception of what transpired.

Ben: I'm not going to touch that one.

Dan: It elevated the franchise to a whole new plateau of imaginosity.

Mike: "Market research" will get you nowhere.

Ed: While I don't think it's a terrible film, I don't think the film belongs in the BW mythology, except maybe in the way that the Star Wars Christmas Special belongs in the Star Wars mythology. I'm kidding, of course.

I would've completely supported it had it not had the BW name on it. I would've enjoyed it a lot more if it didn't have all this weight behind it. It had nothing to do with the original and any other BW movie that Dan and I had envisioned, and that's what really bothered Dan and me.

While I love (Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2 director) Joe Berlinger's other films, I think he made a calculated decision to try to make a film in an atmosphere that was not conducive to creative filmmaking. The film was a business decision, and it suffered because of it.

Robin: Artisan had their own goals in mind. We were not in charge. I have a lot of respect for Joe Berlinger - but he was in a very difficult place. Gregg, Mike and I personally had very little involvement. Once Dan and Ed told them we did not like the direction Blair 2 was taking, we all became powerless. It was a very difficult process to watch especially when we cared so much. We can only put it down to painful lessons learned by all.

Chiller: Some of you segued into TV projects, such as In Search Of... (Note: refer to CHILLED 2 THE CORE's piece, "Freak Out", for an in-depth interview with Freakylinks show runner David Simkins.) Let's talk about those.

Dan: Gregg headed up the Haxan TV projects to a large degree. I still think Freakylinks was damn cool and had it been given more of a chance, could have worked into something enduring.

Mike: Had FOX actually carried through with the online integration that was meant to be a part of [the originally titled] Fearsum (Freakylinks), I think they would be way ahead of the online game right now.

Chiller: Do you ever go back into the woods near Burkitsville? You know, have a picnic, couple beers... seems like old times talk?

Dan: Ed does. Something about wanting to shoot a new ending. Whatever.

Ben: After the film had been picked up by Artisan, we were asked to go back and reshoot alternate endings in the house. They were all PURE cheese... Ed and Dan fought for - and won - keeping the ending as it was. But the upside: we all got paid to go back to Maryland. Mike had taken his ratty jeans off the night we finished shooting and left them - and they were still there! I hear the house is gone now.

Chiller: Can we realistically expect to see a Blair Witch prequel?

Dan: Anything is possible.

Robin: As long as it is a good story.

Ed: I think there's a good chance that we'll see another BW, but as far as the prequel is concerned, that next BW movie would have to do really well to have a chance at making the prequel happen. Or Dan and I could have a huge hit and we could push that down someone's throat.