Candi’s Corner: Interview with new Evil Dead Director Fede Alvarez

*Please note- if you have not seen
the original Evil Dead movie and would like to
see it before watching Fede Alvarez’s version, you will be slightly
spoiled reading this interview! You’ve been warned.

As my journey in the movie industry
continues, from acting to writing to reviewing, I find myself talking
to the most interesting of people. However, I’ve met very few,
where I can see in their eyes and from their body language and facial
expressions, the look of cynicism. Many are passionate, yet because
the odds seem very much not in their favor in this merciless
business, you begin to notice more of the jaded, the cynical, the
unhelpful, and the unkind.

Upon meeting Fede Alvarez, Uruguayan
director of the new Evil Dead movie, which premieres today (4/5) in
widespread theatres, he appeared to be none of these things. When I
first did my research on Fede, the beginning of his story reminded me
a little bit of the famous Schwab drugstore Hollywood story from the
Golden Era. That story where Lana Turner was discovered
sitting at the counter and then in the blink of an eye became a
super-starlet. Fede’s Schwab drugstore was YouTube, where his 2009
short, Ataque de Panico!/Panic Attack!, caught Hollywood’s eye and
then in the blink of an eye he became the director of the new Evil
Dead. 

After sitting down and listening to
Fede talk, I know that he is a different sort of writer/director – one
grateful for the opportunities he has been given and very
hard-working. His luck, confidence, education, excess of talent, and
candidness will continue to serve him very well in the next stages of
his career. I was lucky enough to gain from Fede’s forthright
knowledge and wisdom during a round table discussion (thanks Le Anne
and Ann-Marie!). Listening to him surely made me understand why the
producers and writer/director of the original Evil Dead movie
gave him the freedom and chance to craft his own vision of a horror
cult classic. I hope that his words will make you ponder and laugh
just as much as it did for me, and if you are a writer/filmmaker as
well, give you the jolt that you may need to create work bound to no
one but yourself. Please enjoy the no holds barred roundtable Q&A
interview with Fede Alvarez below!

Q: How excited were you to actually
get to work on Evil Dead?

A: In the beginning it was
exciting and scary at the same time. I was like, “Oh shit!” But,
I mean, it’s awesome, particularly…at the very early stages,
somehow I end up at Bruce Campbell’s [played the lead character of
“Ash” in the original Evil Dead movie] house in Miami,
staying with him for a week. We’re at the pool and he’s telling
me all the stories, it’s just insane…it’s so bizarre and it’s
super surreal, but awesome! I’m a big fan of Sam Raimi’s
[legendary director and writer of the original Evil Dead]
films, since I was a kid, and when you know his movies and you just
looking for Ted Raimi [producer of Evil Dead remake and
executive producer of the original Evil Dead; Sam’s brother;
also legendary director, writer, actor, producer] in every movie, and
you’re looking for the car and you kind of know his entourage of
actors…. You enjoy his movies in a different way. So if you don’t
know that universe, maybe it’s different, but knowing that
universe, I really enjoy his films, so working on one of those and
being a part of that family has been great. I really became close
with Bruce, and Rob [G. Tapert, executive producer/producer of the
original Evil Dead movie], and Sam, so it’s been a blessing.
It’s amazing. 

Q: Was it tough to find a balance
there between what you loved about the original [Evil Dead]
film and what you were trying to say with your film?

A: The whole process is tough.
Writing film is definitely tough by itself. It’s not easy. If it
were easy, there would be awesome films every weekend and there’s
not! So it’s really tough to make any film. In general, it’s hard
to write a new film. At the end of the day, it was a challenge, but
because I am a fan of the originals [Evil Dead movies], I
naturally wanted to bring so many things from the original films. I
think they were trying to stop me at some points from bringing so
many of the other things, but for me it was important from a
spiritual point of view to have a lot of references from the original
film. The fans will spot some of them, but not all of them. I knew
that all we had to do was tell a story where it didn’t matter if
you had seen the original films or not, you will get it, you will
understand, and you will be a part of it. Once we started showing the
movie to audiences we realized that a lot of the fans loved it and
the references to the originals. 

[cont] The people that have never seen the
originals, sometimes they even have a bigger blast because suddenly
they’re exposed to a whole new universe, just at once, “BOOM!”
right in your face, and they’re like, “What?!”, and they don’t
see any of the things coming. Sometimes the people that haven’t
seen the originals have an even bigger ride and that happened when we
test screened the movie, having 50 percent of the audience who knew
the original movie and the other 50 percent had no idea about the
original movie. That other 50 percent had a blast – we got very
high scores from those people. So it was very bizarre, but we
ended up striking a line there where you didn’t need to see the
original to understand and enjoy this one. You know when you like a
movie and you wish you hadn’t seen it so you can experience it
again? Every time I sit down and I’m gonna show it to somebody,
like Oldboy, which is one of my favorite movies, I always envy
them like, “Fuckers, they haven’t seen it. They’re gonna have
such a blast that I’m not having because I’ve seen it a hundred
times.” So, for a new audience, I think, they’re going to have
that. It’s the first time they’re going to be exposed to the
story and they get so shocked. They don’t any idea what’s coming.

Q: How was it to transition from
making a short film on YouTube to going to a feature film? 

 

A: It was awesome. I wouldn’t
say it was harder because I think… by definition, I think what’s
harder: to make a 15 million dollar movie or make an alien invasion
movie for $300.00 dollars? I think the latter is harder. For any
filmmaker in general, the “how to break in”, how to do something
to get people’s attention where you have no resources, no money and
you’re trying to make films, that’s the hardest part. To
transition itself wasn’t tough in the making…. [In making Evil
Dead] suddenly you’re surrounded by great artists, you’re
surrounded by great actors… so in many levels it’s easier. The
toughest part is the Hollywood game you have to play. It was just a
different thing, because shooting is shooting, and when you’re
shooting and you’re on set it’s just the same, it doesn’t
matter. You suddenly have better artists around you, but shooting
itself is the same thing you did all your life if you’re a
director. The hardest part is how to manage to get Hollywood to make
a film in a different way, when there’s an industry that’s
existed for 100 years and suddenly you come in and you want to do
things in a different way. How do you gain their trust? How do you
convince them that it’s a good idea?…

Fede- “You know what, let’s
not do CGI, let’s do everything real!” 

Hollywood- “What?” For
them, it looks great CGI. They don’t see any problem with that. 

Fede- “Why don’t we get every actor to read and audition for the
role?”  

Hollywood- “You can get any actor you want, just give
him/her the role….” There are so many things that are a part of
how they make movies over there and that was the bigger challenge. 

I
think we really succeeded because we managed to do a movie in a
different way. It was completely approached in a different way that
most adult horror film remakes haven’t been done in the past. That
was tough, but I think we succeeded.

Q: You originally got signed to do
just any picture with Ghost House [Pictures]. When did the decision
get made that you were going to transition to the Evil Dead
remake? 

 

A: It was a blind deal and then
that blind deal ended up turning into making an adaptation of the
short [Ataque de panico!/Panic Attack; available to watch on
YouTube] into a feature. We’re actually still developing that and
may be my next feature, which would be this super hard R violent
alien-invasion movie, because I always though alien-invasion movies
were done in a friendly, PG-13 way. I want to see the real one, the
brutal one, the realistic one that’s never been done before.
Through the process of developing that film we just had so much fun
sitting at the table, talking with Sam about how the movie should be
and just talking in general about scenes and ideas. Then Sam offered
me to make an Evil Dead 2, out of that relationship. I said
yes, but said that the film was being written by an American writer.
But he gave me a chance to write it myself, because Evil Dead
is a filmmaker’s film. What makes the original great is that it’s
a guy with his friends, going out to the woods, going bananas, trying
to make the scariest movie ever. That’s kind of the spirit. So he
thought, Evil Dead would never work in a studio system of five
different writers writing drafts and eventually getting some director
that comes in, shoots the film, makes the cut, and just disappears…
that’s why he never did it [a remake] in the past. He wanted
somebody that would stay until the last minute and that’s the way
we did it.

Q (courtesy of Tinsel &
Tine/Candi’s Corner!!!!): How intense was the casting process and
what were you looking for in the actors/actresses that were chosen?

A: It was intense. It was a lot
of fun, but really intense too. Bruce Campbell was with me all the
time, which was great, because it was intimidating for some of the
actors to walk in the room and see Bruce Campbell there. Also,
because he would scare everybody out of the room, he would start
talking to them explaining what it is. He would go, “Have you ever
been under five hours of makeup every day for three months?” Having
to sit in a chair for five hours and then when you finish having to
sit for two hours more to get rid of it…there’s so many things.
You’re covered in blood all day. They beat you up. The director is
in a frenzy trying to make the scariest things possible, as violent
as you can, beating the hell out of them on so many levels… for the
actors it’s very tough. I always talk about this as some sort of
joke, but believe me, for them, they are, my God, sometimes I
feel bad about it [laughter in the room]. It was very, very tough, so
I was looking for not just the best actors I could find, and
everybody read for this role, you have no idea. Every young
actor in Hollywood wanted to be in this movie because there was a
good buzz about the script, Sam was involved… so many people read
for us. But at the end of the day it was about finding the right
actor and finding the people who had the balls to do it. There are
people in Hollywood that you know they can be great, but they’re
not up to the challenge. Or maybe because they’re at such a level
already where they’re like, “Oh, I’ll be in my trailer…”
kind of thing and that’s doesn’t work in our movie. Everybody was
on set all the time, very independent at heart, it’s a studio movie
that was completely independently made. You have Rob Tapert’s
production company making the film in New Zealand, so he’s
completely away from the Hollywood system. So it’s super
independent. So there wasn’t any room for any divas or
prima-donnas. They wouldn’t have survived the shooting, they would
have quit. They loved the movie [the actors/actresses], thank God.
But during the making of it, it was just so tough. It’s no work in
a coalmine, but it’s tough. 

Q: (courtesy of Tinsel &
Tine/Candi’s Corner!!!!): What/who are your influences as an
artist? Where do you take your influence from art or from other
horror directors of the past?

A: As a filmmaker, when you’re
creating something, you’re ripping off everybody, that’s what
you’re doing. Some directors will deny it, but I think that, at the
end of the day, in any creative process you rip off everything that
you’ve loved of the past, and you mix them into something new and
that’s always a new film. So we’re kind of quoting all the time
things from other movies that we loved. There’s a lot of The
Exorcist, of course… there comes a structure of the film,
having half of the film, which is completely realistic, in a way, and
doesn’t have anything that gives away the supernatural aspect of
the story, and then in the middle you hit the crazy bottom… she
starts vomiting… and you go, “What?” and you go to a completely
bizarre place. That’s something that I love about the structure of
the film [The Exorcist] because it’s kind of misleading. You
think it’s gonna be one thing and I could feel the audience go,
“Ahhh, it’s one of those…”…I’m a big fan of Bram
Stoker’s Dracula. He could have done so many weird choices
in the effects universe, but he didn’t. He decided to go old-school
and make it all practical effects… in that movie they are pushing
walls in, they’re talking, and if you don’t notice the wall in
the back has been pushed in to give a sense of oppression… they did
a lot of those very 50s and 60s visual effects, a lot of the zoom-ins
and other very old-school effects, that’s something that I love
about that film. What else… The Omen. The realism of how the
characters approach the supernatural. It doesn’t matter how much
they try to prove to Mr. Thorn, he still insists “He’s just a
child for Christ sake!” and they want him to kill the kid. It
doesn’t matter how much they have to prove, they really have to
push him and push him and push him…. it’s a great story of how
you turn somebody that doesn’t believe in anything, that is a
completely serious politician and you take him to a place where he is
about to kill his own child. It’s really a great journey.

Q: I don’t know if this was
intentional, but I kind of almost saw Evil Dead
as Evil Dead 3, now they’re breaking off the
Army of Darkness movies, as the next one is going to be Army
of Darkness 2. Was that all intentional?

A: Yeah, it was, because I
didn’t want this film to overwrite anything that was done before. I
didn’t want this film to take the place of the original Evil
Dead in its mythology. I wanted this film to say something
different from the original. So there’s nothing in this film that
will overwrite the original, even if you may say, “Oh well the
book…”. No, because the book doesn’t burn in the original film.
It’s thrown in the fire and does some crazy things, but it was
never really consumed in the original film, if you watch it again.
The book is always there. We were very careful of not saying
something in this film that would override or contradict something of
the original film. Here [in the remake] we had more options. In my
mind, in the original first film, it’s one thing, and then the
second and third [originals] is another film. It’s kind of
rebooted. It’s not about Ash going with his friends, it’s about
Ash going with his girlfriend just to have this romantic getaway,
which is completely different from going with your friends, and then
he plays the tape and she turns… and then all these new other
characters come in. So, it’s a quite different story, if you
re-watch again you can see that it’s completely different. In the
first film, everybody dies. He’s coming out of the house and the
camera runs to him and he screams… so he never left the cabin. The
car’s still there…so in a way you can take my film as thirty
years later.

Q: In development was there anything
that you knew you had to do to please the fans?

A: Sam gave me the best advice
in the beginning of making the movie, which was basically that “you
have to make the movie that you want to see in the theaters.” Don’t
think about what I want to see, don’t think about what Rob wants to
see or Bruce wants to see, or what the audience wants to see, or what
the fans want to see. You gotta go crazy and start thinking that way.
He was right, because if I asked all of them, they would probably
have wanted a different movie, each one of them. Their job was just
to let me do my film, the one that I loved. They knew that I
was a fan of the saga, and that I knew the saga and I knew every
film. I knew enough about the film. So Sam’s master plan was that
instead of choosing some Hollywood director to do this film, instead
find one of those guys that are in the audience, get them on stage,
and now you make the film and do the film that you
like. Suddenly, I realized that the audience enjoyed my film in the
same way that I did. A lot of people laughed with me, in the moments,
because they get it, they get what we’re doing. So at the end of
the day, that’s the only thing that you can do. You have to make
the film that you believe is the best version of it, because if you
make it for somebody else, it’s probably going to fail.

Q: As a fan of the genre, and you’re
working with all of these big names and you’re going up against all
of these Hollywood issues that you mentioned earlier, can you talk
about the process that you went into as a fan? What was it like?

A: It’s something I never
expected. There’s one thing that I fought, and I think a lot of
fans also feel this way, in that Hollywood makes these bad movies, in
that do they choose to make bad movies before they make good ones? Do
they have these great scripts and say, “You know what? I’m not
going to make that movie. We’re going to make that
one, just to make money. It’s not like that. They have to make a
lot of movies. There are a lot of people working in that industry and
there’s not a lot of good stuff! The movies that are out right now,
the guarantees, those are the best scripts out there. Imagine where
are the bad scripts….so it’s definitely something that I was
always bitching about. “Why are they doing that instead of doing
this?” But that other option doesn’t exist! You have to come in
and do it yourself. They are very eager and desperate for new talent
and new ideas. That’s something that really changed my perspective.
My perspective before was, “Oh, they’re the enemy. They love to
make these bad movies.” Nobody tries to make bad movies. Nobody has
the attention to make bad movies. They always try to make good stuff.
It’s just it’s so hard to find.

[cont] There are very few writers these
days, like real scriptwriters that do it as a craft. I come from a
place where I studied it and I have a Master’s in screenwriting. I
was really committed to writing. There used to be a classic school in
Hollywood of people that were devoted to writing…back in the day
when there were New York writers, just journalists that went to
Hollywood to start writing. They were really professional writers.
That doesn’t exist anymore and it’s a shame. They want that. They
need more of that. They need more filmmakers that really love the
craft. I know a lot of young filmmakers in L.A. and they always ask
me if I made Panic Attack as a strategy to get to Hollywood.
It’s just terrible because you cannot make a short with the goal of
getting something. You have to make a short for the passion of making
it. If you’re trying to get something else, oh God, it’s just
like you’re selling your soul to the Devil and it’s never going
to work. There’s a new generation of people that just want to do it
because they think it’s cool… all that is really not helping. You
get a lot of bad actors. You get a lot of bad scripts. You get a lot
of other things… there’s just people that wanna work in the
industry and they don’t really care about filmmaking itself. You
have to love your films. You have to love the craft of filmmaking and
that’s something that at least I feel that way about what I do. I’m
really passionate about my shorts and every bad word that I read
about crush my heart. Sometimes I really try and make good films and
sometimes you cannot blame them. It’s up to our generation to
change that. We’re the generation that has to go and write movies
with more passion, and really care about it. A lot of the films that
come out, the other generation they go to shoot it, they go home,
they don’t care, you know…it just goes through the studio system
and that’s so unfair. Hopefully that’s going to change in the
future.