411 Movies Interview: Hatchet Director Adam Green
Posted by Tony Farinella on 09.04.2007
411's Tony Farinella sits down with the director of Hatchet, Adam Green, for an in depth interview about his film.
I've had the pleasure of interviewing two of the biggest horror directors in modern cinema today. I've had lengthy interviews with both Darren Lynn Bousman from Saw and Eli Roth from Hostel. Both interviews are among my favorites. You can throw Adam Green, the director of Hatchet, into that group. In fact, even though he wants to be his own man, he reminds me of Eli Roth in many ways. He knows how to sell his movie, he loves horror films, and he's as passionate as they come. He's incapable of giving an uninteresting answer in this interview. His story should be an inspiration to any filmmaker out there who wants to make a film. After you hear his story, you'll be ready for anything. Needless to say, this guy deserves your support. If Hatchet is playing in your area next weekend, you owe it to yourself to check it out. It's worth the trip. It opens up on September 7th, 2007. If you would like more information on where it's playing, please check out the offical Hatchet website at www.hatchetmovie.com
TONY: You have gone on an incredible journey of highs and lows in an effort to get this film made and get this film in theaters. If you can, walk me through the journey from day one until now. What's it been like?
ADAM: It really starts over two decades ago. My parents sent me to this terrible summer camp where they had us scrubbing floors and cleaning toilets. It was just the worst summer ever. At some point, in that summer, the counselors told us to stay away from this one cabin or else Hatchet-Face would get us. It's basically just the cabin where they drank and fucked around. And they didn't want the kids going near it. I had an older brother who had already shown me a bunch of slasher films, and I was all excited about it. I was like, "Who's Hatchet-Face?" And they didn't have an answer. I'm like, "What's he gonna do to me?" And they're like, "He'll get you." I'm like, "With what?" And they didn't have any answers. So that night I made up this whole elaborate story about a deformed man who was trapped behind a burning door and got hit in the face with a hatchet and died. All the other kids in the cabin started crying and the counselors called my parents, and they were going to send me home. I was the weird kid at camp. Twenty years later, I wrote that story, basically, about that character that I made up, and I gave the script to my agent. I was doing TV pilots at the time, so things were actually going pretty well. My agent sent it out to a few of the bigger places, and one of the first rejections we got said, "The writing is brilliant, but this film will never get made, because it's not a remake, it's not a sequel, and it's not based on a Japanese one." I don't know if you ever saw the poster that we used for the festivals, but that was the tag-line on the fucking poster. It says so much about the state of horror in Hollywood today.
We went and we got the money from private equity, which wasn't as hard as some people have, because we had such a great package to put in front of investors. For anybody who winds up reading or listening to this who wants to make movies, one of the smart things that we did was we went and we made a mock trailer, which we spent a total of about 8 dollars on actually making. It was just a shot in a swamp and a little girl telling the story of Victory Crowley. When we gave the script to potential investors, being able to show them a trailer that had a fake release date and all this stuff on it, that really sort of wet their appetite and made it very real to them. The other thing that the mock trailer did was once we put it on online, all the horror websites started talking about it and were trying to figure it out. They were like, "Is this a real movie? Has it already been shot? What's going on?" With the investors that we were talking to, we could say, "When you get home tonight, just google Hatchet and see what comes up." And there's dozens of websites talking about it. That really helped sell it to them, that this was a good idea for them to invest in. Once we had the money, we didn't have a lot of money, we had the bare minimum that you could try to make a movie like this for, and we wound up having to shoot it in the summertime. In the summer, the sun doesn't really go down until 9 o'clock at night, where you can start shooting. By 5 in the morning, it's up again and your day's over. The typical film set gets about 12 hours a day to shoot, if not 16 if you can afford the overtime. We were shooting for 7 hours. We basically shot the movie in what was supposed to be 24 days, but because our days were cut in half, it was as if we shot the whole movie in 14 days. And when you're lighting people on fire and doing underwater photography and dealing with live alligators and rain and boats and make-up effects and stunts, it was absolutely suicidal and nobody thought we would ever finish it, except for the crew.
When we did finish it, I showed it to the agency that was repping me. It was still kind of unfinished, but they could get the gist of it. And they said they didn't want to represent the film, because it's never gonna get into a film festival, and they only rep film festival movies. So, I was on my own. A few weeks later, all of a sudden we got into the Tribeca Film Festival. A few weeks after that, Variety, New York Times, and The L.A Times were all saying that one of the biggest hits of the festival was gonna be Hatchet. Then all of a sudden the agency really wants to get involved. And I fired them. We went to Tribeca, and we premiered the film to 5 sold-out nights and the audiences absolutely loving it, going crazy. The critics, that was the biggest surprise, was that the critics liked it. Critics don't like these movies. They never do. If you look at the original Halloween, which is still probably the greatest horror movie ever made, and one good review out of everybody in the country. Everyone hated it. We were really surprised when the reviews started coming in, and they were glowing and calling Victory Crowley a new icon and saying that this is what horror needs. Unfortunately, though, the offers that we were getting from distributors were just insulting. It was all straight-to-video and just garbage. We asked a few of them, "Why? With all these reviews and all the buzz and the reaction, why straight-to video?" And they said, "Well, it just doesn't fit what works right now. We're really after remakes. We like torture or PG-13. And there's no way to make this movie PG-13, because it's so violent, but it doesn't really get there. It's not deprived and sick enough, so it's not just going to work." I just said, "Fuck you," and didn't take any of the offers.
And we just kept showing the film. One night, we did a screening here in Hollywood where we invited the distributors to come and look at it again. At this point, there had been so many good reviews, that now all of a sudden they were thinking, "Well, maybe it is good." Because the distributors don't know. They watch 500 movies a day, and they have no idea if something's good or not. They need people to tell them if it's good or not. And we put an ad on the Hatchet website that said, "Free screening of Hatchet at 8 O'clock tonight." And I rented a 400-seat theater on a credit card, because at this point, I hadn't been paid in about 2 years. I was in debt way over my head, but I knew that this movie had to go theatrical. We posted that, and 735 people showed up. The distributors all came late, because that's what they do. They always show up late, and they leave early. And they couldn't get in. There was all this, "Do you know who I am?" at the door. It's just too bad. You couldn't get in, because the fans had already filled the theater. They had to wait on the sidewalk in line with 300 kids, waiting to get in for another show that we had to add. And that was the night that we sold the film theatrically. And that still really wasn't the end of the journey, because our negatives get scratched and we had to completely redo post production, because it didn't look right. There's so many things that have gone wrong. And then the MPAA swooped in and gave us an NC-17 rating and said, "This film is too violent." That was probably the hardest part of the whole thing, because there's nothing you can do. When they decide to come after you, it's like Nazi Germany. There's nowhere to run and nowhere to hide, and nobody will come to your defense. They can do whatever they want to you. Unfortunately, that's something in the American film system that needs to change. The only people who want to change it are the people being affected by it. I would like to make a call to the much bigger and successful directors who don't have to deal with them and say, "Why are you letting them get away with this, and why don't you take them down? Because you could." But they don't. The MPAA really dragged me through the mud for about two and a half months. I went to trail over it, to try to fight them.
The original version of it, it is really violent, but it's fun violence. It's the type of thing where every audience, all over the world that you see it with, they start cheering and clapping. It's the shit you don't get to see anymore. It's all practical and real effects. There's no CG. It doesn't look stupid, and its heart is in the right place. And you're laughing so much throughout the movie, because it's very funny. And then these horrific death scenes happen that are so ridiculous and so over-the-top. It couldn't happen in real life. Yet, the MPAA basically had a stance that it's okay to rape a woman on camera or torture somebody or show people doing drugs or having sex or making homophobic remakes. Any of that is fine, but god forbid a swamp monster with a gas-powered belt sander chases a group of comedians through the woods and kills them in cartoonish ways. That's where they draw the line? No one even smokes a fucking cigarette in Hatchet. They hate Independent movies, especially when they make it into theaters, because god forbid this movie actually ends up doing well in theaters. Hatchet has no marketing. There's no money behind it at all. If we do well, that scares the shit out of Hollywood. That was the hardest part of the whole thing. It just really, really broke my heart. The movie got re-edited about 6 times. When you're not making a studio film, we have to pay for that. They didn't take out that much, honestly. It's not that different. The one thing that I think is different, though, is the tone of the film before. Every death got carried out to excess. Every time you thought it was over, it just kept going. That was the fun of it. And they kind of shortened everything. Everybody still dies the same way and it's not like your missing anything, but you are at the same time. That was really unfortunate.
Even when we did our commentary for the DVD, we had one night to do it, because all the actors are on other movies now. And two transformers exploded on the lot that we were recording on. We had to figure out a way to run it off of my DP's car battery and do our commentary off of a running car. Everything that could have gone wrong with this movie has gone wrong, but at the same time, because of that, everything keeps going right. I know I'm supposed to be just promoting the movie and saying why you should go see it and all that stuff, but even more important to me, it should be an inspirational story to anybody else who wants to do this. I had no connections. I come from a very lower middle-class family. My parents worked 5 jobs between the two of them. My dad was a gym teacher. I had nothing, and I found a way. If I can do it, then anybody can do it. You just have to keep laughing no matter what life throws at you and how much things are going wrong and make the most out of what you can. The one interesting thing about Hatchet is what you see is what we shot. There is nothing else. That's literally all the shit that we had time to shoot. It's not like we had options. Sometimes you get these Monday morning quarterbacks who watch it, and they're like, "You know what would have been good here?" It's like, "We don't know that, asshole. You try shooting a movie when everything's basically one take, and you have no money and no time." It's fun. You can't get jaded, and you just gotta laugh and keep going. The fact that we're opening in theaters 24 hours later, I think that anybody can accomplish anything they want to do, if they just keep at it.
TONY: How important was it for you to have a central character like Victor Crowley in your film?
ADAM: Victor Crowley is Hatchet, basically. When I wrote this movie, it was a risk, because this isn't what they're doing anymore. But when I grew up on horror movies, what I loved about it was the villain or the monster. They were like these anti-superheroes. If you look at Freddy Krueger or Dracula or The Wolf Man or Michael Myers, they were just fucking awesome. And that's why you watched the movie, because they had these great mythologies behind them. It could be the simplest story. It could be: "Guy was a child molester and his parents burned him alive, and now he's coming back and killing kids in their dreams." That's it. It was perfect, and it worked. Hatchet is so simple. It's just a ghost story that you could hear probably at any camp. The one thing that I think is throwing people off is we're not trying to say that this is the most original concept ever made. It's a slasher film, but what we did is we treated it with such respect and love for it, where I think that's why it's showing above its predecessors. The script is really witty and the cast is amazing, and they're really, really good. The gore is really good.
Those 80's movies, when you watch them now, especially the sequels, they didn't try. It was like a mathematical equation, where it was like, "OK. We need a killer, and this girl's gotta get naked. This one's gonna do drugs and these two are gonna have sex, and they're gonna die every seven minutes." The originals were always good, because they were made by fans. But once you got to the sequels, it was just a mathematical equation that Hollywood was trying to figure out. Hollywood does not get horror. I don't care what they try to say, they have no idea. They just sit and if something does well, they just copy the shit out of until it's not doing well anymore. Right now, we're sort of in a division where the remakes, well, until this weekend, weren't doing very well, and the torture is starting to fade. Everyone is tying to figure out where is it gonna go next. With Hatchet, I wanted to put the fun back in horror again. When I got into this shit, it wasn't to see women get raped and see people get realistically tortured. And I'm not slamming those movies. I think Saw is fucking great, and I think the concept for Hostel is one of the scariest things I've ever heard of. At the same time, there's only so much you can do. After a while, you just get numb to it. I don't want to go sit in a movie for 2 hours just to watch somebody strapped to a chair and crying and begging for their life. I want to be entertained. I want to walk out of it smiling. That's the one thing Hatchet does. The audiences walk out, and they might be a little sweaty and a little pale, but they're smiling and they want to do it again. As cliche as it sounds, it's just a roller coaster ride, and you're laughing, you're screaming, and you're grossed out. It's a lot of fun.
TONY: When you were trying to get your film into theaters, did any horror directors offer you any advice?
ADAM: Oh, my god, yeah. There's been so many people that have been supportive of me and helped. Unfortunately, in this business, you don't really understand until you're there, but there's not much you can really do to help somebody, except be supportive and give them advice. It's not like you can make calls and make things happen. Unless you're like Steven Spielberg or something, there's not much people can do. With my MPAA trail, Eli Roth was really cool and called me and talked me through it and told me what to do. Unfortunately, at that point, I had already appealed. And the first thing he said is, "Don't appeal! Because then they're gonna really hate you" He's been great. He showed up to one of our screenings, and it just means a lot. When other fans see that, they're like, "Well, if he's here, it's gotta be pretty cool." James Gunn took me to lunch, and we talked about how to get distribution and how to do all that stuff. He was awesome. And then the people I consider my peers, Joe Lynch , who just did Wrong Turn 2, and Mike Mendez. Everybody's been just really supportive of it. They're e-mailing everybody they know, trying to go get people to see it. They really believe in it, and they always show up whenever there's an event. Everybody likes to complain about how miserable Hollywood is, and, obviously, to some degree, those stories are true. But the good far outweighs the bad.
I think the system is very flawed, but the people within it are actually some of the best people that you'll ever meet, even the executives on the studio side. There's so many good people there. It's just the way the system works, it's just very corrupt and not fair and a little bit like high school in a way. It's a mixture between high school and college, because the talent agencies and the studios are basically like fraternities and sororities. But then you have this high school mentality where you can't believe how ridiculous it is. Something that happened to us this week ... Now, remember, we're the underdog. We're gonna be on like 70 screens. We can't even make a dent at the box office next week, even if we sold out every screening, which we don't need to. If we can fill the seats, we'll expand, which is what we're after. But, as far as the box office report, we won't even be on it. Yet, somebody is very threatened by us, because we've had like 4 attempts to try to take down our website. Also, our Hatchet Army Myspace got hacked and deleted over the weekend. Somebody's really trying to screw with us. Maybe it's just some disgruntled filmmaker who's jealous, but my theory is that it's one of these other studios. They don't like it when a movie like this works. They just don't like it.
TONY: Why do you think recent horror films, such as Hostel Part 2 and others, haven't performed as expected at the box office?
ADAM: Hostel Part 2 was definitely not a lot failure. The movie's gonna make a lot of money, especially by the time all is said and done. It is gonna be a big success. It didn't perform opening weekend, like everybody was hoping it would, but I think that's because they opened it at the wrong time of year. You don't open that movie in the summer, because you're up against way too much other stuff. I also think, in general, the torture thing has played its course. Even though the original Hostel and the original Saw were the pioneers of all that, there's just all these imitators, especially the straight-to-video stuff. The market's saturated with torture, and nobody really wants to see it anymore. I think that's really it. The audiences are not as excited about it. I don't know if you remember the commercial for The Hills Have Eyes 2, which was one of the worst movies ever made. It said, "Critics and audiences were appalled by how depraved The Hills Have Eyes was. Wait till you see what we did this time." I saw that, I think I was in a bar with a bunch of people, and that commercial broke and everyone just started laughing. That's supposed to make us want to go to see that movie? Wait till we see what you did this time? Fuck off! People don't understand horror movies. We're not sick, weird people. If we were sick, weird people, we'd stay at home and watch autopsy videos or holocaust videos or something like that. It's not like we just want to see people die. We do want to be entertained and we are smart, and we do know a good movie when we see one. And you're not going to make us go buy a ticket, because you said this movie is really depraved. That's not gonna do it. I think that's sort of what's stopping that trend.
I think we're coming out at a good time, because the movie's just fun. I think word of mouth is gonna be good, and I think people will go. And I think the audiences, especially in America, are ready for a new boogeyman. We're ready for a new character that you can both cheer and fear. The timing's really good for us, I think. Unfortunately, we don't have a 20-million dollar marketing campaign like Cabin Fever or Saw or any of those other Indy films that blew up. We have to go the long marathon of just trying to stay in theaters as long as we can and hope that the fans support it. I keep, on my website, calling the fans out on this, but I've done every horror convention and every film festival over the past two years. I've been on tour non-stop. And everyone says the same thing when they come up to get an autograph. They're like, "I'm sick of remakes. What's up with PG-13 horror movies?" But then they keep going to see them. I'm like, "Well, did you see Behind The Mask when it opened?" They're like, "Well, no. I was at The Hills Have Eyes 2." I'm like, "Dude, it's your fault. Why didn't you go to see Behind the Mask?" And they're like, "Oh, I dunno. Everyone else was going to see The Hills Have Eyes 2." Again, I'm like, "Where were you for Grindhouse?" And, again, they're like, "Umm, I dunno." That's why we're getting these films. Hollywood doesn't like the remakes. It's not like they think they're good films. They just know that they're gonna work because it's a pre-packaged title, and the fans are gonna go. Halloween, this weekend, is a great case in point. I haven't seen it yet and I hope it's good, but I haven't heard anything good about it. Still, it's going to make like 35 million dollars. Literally, tomorrow morning in Hollywood, they're gonna be going through the shelves and trying to find any horror title they can and remaking it, because this one just made so much money. It's very important that the fans do show up for something like Hatchet. And if you think I'm just saying it to try and support my own movie, don't go to Hatchet. Then go to the next original movie. I don't care. If there's an original movie out and you're really a die-hard horror fan, spend the money and go buy a ticket and support it and bring your friends and try to help out a little bit, because the fans control the genre. They'll cater to you.
A really good example of that is the theaters that we're booked in. This is a tiny movie that, for all intents and purposes, should be in the art-house theaters and the second-run theaters, but we're in the five best theaters in the world right now. We're at the Empire in New York, we're at the Archlight in Hollywood, we're at the Egyptian in Baltimore, and the fans did that. They kept going to the theater and telling them about it and saying, "We want this." And the theaters listened. If you look at our listing of theaters, and I know there's a lot of people in the country that are disappointed that it's not playing close to them yet, but the fans did that. They can do it, too. Just go to your theater and talk to them. Talk to the manager and say, "We really want to see this movie." Tell them about it. They will listen, because they just want your money! (laughs) Tell them you'll buy extra popcorn if they play the movie. They'll love that. The fans do have some power here.
TONY: Why do you think so many film critics are so harsh on horror movies?
ADAM: I think if you're gonna become a film critic, there's a certain thing that you respect about films, and horror movies don't usually pay regards to those particular things. Obviously, there's films like The Exorcist or Rosemary's Baby, which are almost more dramas. I would say they're horrific dramas. Hatchet delivers what the fans want. If you're like, "Okay, this is an old-school slasher movie," you're gonna get exactly what you wanted. And the critics don't understand why you would want that in the first place. They're not impressed with monsters or gore. It's not their thing. The one thing we have going for us, and I know I'm supposed to keep saying, "Oh, the movie is so good," I don't know if the movie is really that good. But the critics love Hatchet, and I think it's because a lot of the critics are my age. And they're sick of what's going on in horror, too, so they see this movie and it's like a blast from the past and a breath of fresh air, and they're all getting behind it. Most of the critics are in their 30's, and they grew up on this, too. They remember what it used to be like. Again, I think the time is just right, and that's why we're getting such good reviews. If Hatchet came out five years ago or five years from now, I don't know if it would be received the same way. We're just sort of lucking out. And, again, all those things that went wrong, that made it take so long to get to this point, I think it all happened for a reason. Even if we had came out a year ago, I don't think it would have been like this. You just gotta go along with the ride and keep laughing and assuming that there's a reason for everything. Even if we only make 10 dollars at the box office, it's a profit. We don't have the same pressures that these other movies do that spend millions and millions in marketing. I do hope that the fans just go, and it would be such a middle finger to Hollywood if they look at the box office reports, and they see that we have a high per-screen average without any marketing, without any money. It's just the fans. They're gonna be floored.
TONY: When I interviewed Eli Roth back in June, he said that current horror films are allowing teenagers to deal with their fears and worries about the world after 9/11. Do you think we're seeing a lot of that with recent horror films?
ADAM: I definitely would agree with that, especially with movies like Hostel. A lot of the atrocities that are going on with this whole war on terror, Americans, especially, were very blind to that reality until 9/11 when it came out. And then all of a sudden, you're watching TV and you're seeing journalists get beheaded and realizing that this is real and this is really happening. The brutality of some of the horror films that have come out are helping people vicariously experience it for a little bit and deal with it. I'd like to say Hatchet is like that, but it's not. It's just pure escapism, which is also something important. I think we need to laugh again and face our fears and have fun with them. When you're a kid, Halloween night should technically be scary, because there's ghouls and goblins and everyone's dressed up, but it's fun. This is sort of my answer to almost combat that and say, "Yeah, the world is pretty depressing right now and it is fucked up, but why don't we laugh again?" We should all have a good time. I know there's some people that don't want to have a good time and only want to see the most vulgar and depressing films they can. That's not my audience and if this movie isn't sick and depressing enough for you, I really don't care. (laughs)
TONY: Your film features so many horror icons like Kane Hodder, Robert Englund and Tony Todd. How did they get involved in your film, and what did they bring to the project?
ADAM: It all comes down to the fact that they really responded to the script, because we didn't have enough money to afford them. This is the genre that those guys built and when they read it, I think they really appreciated what I was trying to do. This was their way of putting their stamp of approval on it and just saying, "We support this." That's huge with the fans. You hear that this Independent movie has got all this buzz, but then you see that they're in it, and it sort of gives you a little bit of reassurance. It's like, "OK. Maybe it's not gonna suck that bad. I'll check it out. If they're all in it, there's gonna be something good about this." Those guys are amazing. I've been fans of them my whole life. It's one of those things that I wish could happen for everybody, where you get to meet somebody that you've always looked up to and they just live up to every expectation that you had. You hear stories all the time about people who meet celebrities that they looked up to, and they're let down. These guys just blew me away, and I'm even a bigger fan than I was when I was a kid, because they're so passionate and so good at what they do. They're just so friendly and generous. Even Kane, he's got this persona that he's a bad ass and this big scary guy. He's the nicest guy in the world. I know he doesn't like people to know that, because he likes people to be scared of him. Even on set, the thing that makes him happy is peanut butter and jelly. If you give the guy a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, he just sits there all happy and smiling. He's fucking awesome.
TONY: Why do you think your experience with the MPAA was negative? From watching a lot of modern horror films, directors seem to be able to get away with a lot. Does it come down to money?
ADAM: It all comes down to money. The MPAA is paid by the studios, so if you're a studio film, they're more lenient, even though they might make you take out a few things. Some directors, their way of dealing with them, is to say positive things about them. They might be smarter and better directors than I am by doing that, but I would rather get shot in the face than say "Hail Hitler" to these people just to get them to leave me alone. Their experiences were different because they had studios behind them, they had money, or they had a big name producer who could go in with them and be like, "Come on!" With me, it's just me. They don't know who I am. I'm nobody and this is how I got treated I'm not going to turn around and say, "Oh, but they're OK," just to make friends with them. I got treated so unfairly, because this movie is an easy R. Again, why is it OK to rape and torture people and all that other stuff? And they wouldn't look me in the face when I said that. I'm like, "Explain the reasoning here." And they couldn't. I got treated this way, because it was an Independent film. They know it, I know it, and everybody knows it. It's all said and done now, and I'll go in with an open mind the next time I have to go before them. My other movie, Spiral, is a very easy PG-13. There's no gore, there's no nudity, and there's no swearing. Let's see what happens this time. I don't know. We'll see.
TONY: I know it's early, but have you thought about turning Hatchet into a franchise?
ADAM: The first one has already made money without even coming out, because we made it for so little money. Between all the acquisitions worldwide, it's already a financial success. The people who made the first one are ready to go with the sequel. I did write this with sequels in mind. I purposely left aspects of the story untold, so that the sequel wouldn't just be people getting killed again. It would actually deliver a little bit more of a story for the fans, and you're learning more. I'd love to do it, and I'm planning on doing it right now, but at this point, I'm not officially attached to do it, because I don't know what my schedule's gonna be. I don't know when they want to do it, and I do have a list of requirements. It's a very short list. It's just: Don't make me sell out and make it PG-13 to make more money. It has to be rated R, if I'm gonna do it. The only other thing is that my crew, who worked on the first one, should all be invited to come back for the second one before anybody else, because these people all worked for nothing
