- All right, talk to me. Go, go, go.
- All right. - Go, go, gadget. Sorry.
- Are we ready to go, guys?
- Please, I don't care at all.
I'm thrilled to just sit for a minute.
- I need a couple of these later. - Yes, you do.
("Halloween Theme Main Title" by John Carpenter)
- Hi, my name's Peter Kuplowsky.
I'm the Midnight Madness curator
with the Toronto International Film Festival,
and I am here, and I am so excited,
because I'm trick or treating with Jamie Lee Curtis
and Judy Greer, Andi Matichak and David Gordon Green
of the new Halloween. Guys, can I just thank you
so much for this movie as a horror fan?
I am — I saw the film. I'm so excited.
It's so, so, so good.
[Cherubic singing]
[Laughs loudly]
- No, we're just gonna all give it to you,
David Gordon Green. You just eat it here.
Have some candy, baby.
- I need a moment, yeah.
- Jamie, you've returned to Laurie Strode so many times,
but what keeps you coming back to that character?
I'm sure you hear that question a lot, but...
- Well, the truth of the matter is it's not so many times.
[Laughs softly]
The first time was when Halloween 2 came up,
and it was a direct sequel. The movie started
exactly the moment the first movie left off.
I didn't make another horror film after that
for a long, long time. H2O was because
it was 20 years and I thought it was cool,
and I went to John and Deborah and said,
"We're still in show business. Let's make a movie."
- And I remember when you were doing H2O,
you were interested about the idea
that — what would it be like for a character
who had survived an event like 1979.
- Yes, but in that example, Laurie Strode was running.
She was running for her life, she had changed her identity,
she had moved away, she didn't have the name
Laurie Strode anymore, and she was running
as fast as she could.
And it was — that movie was a lot about alcoholism
and about running from your fear.
Ultimately, I had no intention
of ever pretending to be Laurie Strode again,
and with no malice except great respect for her,
until last June when a phone call came in
from a certain someone through another friend of mine,
and he said, "This is what he's doing."
And he started to explain it to me, and I said no.
[Panel laughing]
I'll read it, and if I like it
I'll say yes, and if I don't like it I'll say no.
That's how quick — and, you know, I think I called him
the next day and said yes.
- And what did you like about it? What was —
- I liked this. - Yes.
- I liked this. I liked that it was a movie
about trauma, and I liked that it explored
it through generations, and it just so happens
that we're at a time in the universe
where women are confronting the trauma of their lives
and, quite frankly, the perpetrator of that trauma,
and saying "No more. I'm gonna take back
the narrative of my life." And so the combination
of that, and the fact that they were talking about it
through the lens of three generations —
a mother passing that trauma and fear and anxiety
onto her daughter, and then passing it on
to her granddaughter.
- In many ways, it really does seem like
taking that trope that had begun with Halloween
and evolving it and taking it past where —
- You just said the "T" word. You have to eat something.
[Laughs loudly]
Here, you know you said "trope."
That means you have to eat chocolate.
- No, but was that — David, were you thinking
about that when you wrote the script?
The legacy of the "T" word [laughs],
the final girl and the idea of maybe dealing with that
as a concept and moving past just the idea
of surviving a night, but what happens after?
- In hindsight, yes.
[Panel laughing]
At the moment — Danny McBride, Jeff Fradley, and myself
were the writers, and the moment when we decided
to come up with what our approach would be,
it was like — as horror movie fans, as movie geeks,
as writers and creative entities,
what do we want to see? Let's have fun.
Let's come up with something that would take
the essence of the 1978 film, which we have such
admiration for, and what can we do with that
that it pays honour to Carpenter, Laurie Strode,
Michael Myers, this universe that we have
so much affection for and can bring it to
the fanbase of that audience with great appreciation
for what WE appreciate, knowing we're part of that fanbase,
and then a new generation to introduce these characters to
in an exciting way.
- And I also noticed that, even though you wiped
the continuity, and we're starting right after
Halloween One 40 years later, but the other
Halloweens don't really factor into it.
You pay a lot of tribute to those other films,
and I was just wondering: was that important, as well,
to pay tribute to Halloween Three and even Halloween Two?
- I think so — to have kind of playful nods to it
so that you get into the specifics of what you're trying
to do. There's no way to appease the entire fanbase,
'cause everyone has a favourite moment
or a favourite movie, or... There's so many things
that are important to all of our nostalgic diet
for the way that we have interpreted Halloween
and how Halloween has played in our lives.
So I don't want to judge anybody.
I had a very specific idea — we chose to take
a specific direction, but wanted to make sure
that we're honouring, saluting the other movies as well,
because it's all different writers,
different directors, different storytellers
doing what they would want to do,
which is what they think would be fun and cool.
And so I don't want to say, "Hey, you guys don't exist."
I want to say, "We were there the whole way through
with every one of you, and—"
- And you don't exist.
[Panel laughing]
- "By the way, just sit this one out."
[Panel laughing]
- "It's our turn."
- Andi and Judy, were you familiar with the legacy
of the Halloween films? Did you watch them?
- Oh yeah, yeah. Of course.
Yeah, that's the face, the mask,
like, popping into a window has haunted me.
[Panel laughing]
- What is it about Myers —
- What is it about that?
Why as an adult, before I even knew
that this was ever gonna happen,
was I always still expecting to see that face
outside of the dining room window?
For my whole life, I'll die feeling that way.
- I feel like it's so scary because it's just so random.
Like, in the original, which is what we're going from,
every act was just random. He just followed her
because he — who knows, you know?
And that was what terrified me,
because it's not like there's a reason
that he's coming after anybody.
It's just, "Oh, could be you."
- And I think that's what's fascinating about Michael Myers,
and it's really interesting as a writer
trying to come up with what he —
'cause he doesn't give you anything.
He doesn't express himself. The mask is nothing.
It's nothing to respond to, it's not expressive,
it's not a clown, it's not a demon.
It's just nothing.
- It's not yelling, even, when he does it.
Like, there's no [yelling sound].
- He's not out seeking vengeance.
He doesn't have a motive. He's not emotional,
he's not expressive.
- [Judy] He's a monster.
- It's just, like, breathing.
- The least writing you can do [laughs],
'cause there's nowhere to go with it,
which makes it kind of challenging,
because it's not like the faceoff he will have
with a potential victim. It's not Hannibal Lecter
playing mind games with Clarice Starling.
It's something almost more vacant than that,
and that's — to me, what scares me
is that it's not somebody that's mad at you, or—
- There's no reason.
- There's no reason for it.
It's a random, neutral nothing.
- So this is also a Blumhouse Production,
and one thing I've always — in legacy of the Halloween films —
is also the economy in which they made that movie.
It was a low-budget movie, and a lot of that low budget
dictated how they made the movie:
the Panaglide shots, the very simple score...
Blumhouse is also a company that believes
that, to make a horror movie, you don't need
a super-size budget; you probably SHOULDN'T have a super sized budget.
Do you agree— - Or pay anyone a lot of money.
[Panel laughing]
- I'm glad you said it.
[Panel laughing]
- But do you think that philosophy
does lend itself to horror, and did it actually help
in the recreation of the aesthetic feeling
of the original film?
- Well, I think it applies to every type of movie,
and I'm someone that doesn't need movie-star appeal
to draw me to the — I need a good movie —
- [Peter] You have a movie star. [Laughs] - I don't need a high-concept — I don't need —
I just need something to be made well,
crafted well, and recommended to me,
or it sounds intriguing, and I'm an adventurous
audience member, but it's a smart business model.
Take some risks. For a low-budget movie,
you don't have a lot of people looking over your shoulder
in the creative, in the immediate creative sense.
On this particular project, we had a universe of people
looking over our shoulder waiting to see what we make,
but it wasn't like someone was challenging
our process. They were supporting our process,
and Blumhouse has a great staff of executives
that are extremely knowledgeable about horror films.
They care about what we're making,
and ideas were welcome. It's a very collaborative group
of people from John Carpenter to Jason Blum to the entire cast —
- To you, I know, but I'm gonna go back to you for a minute,
because the truth of the matter is
there would be other directors who would not want
their input, not welcome the kind of creative
soup that you created for actors.
I mean, very inventive filmmaker.
I mean, really, often, just throw all the words out.
I don't care about any of them.
Say gibberish, I mean, it really just—
- You had a lot of freedom to play.
- Totally freedom, and that's — to be honest,
that's what Jake Gyllenhaal said to me
when he called me to say that David wanted to speak to me.
He said, "I have never had a better time creatively."
And I certainly can attest to that.
It was incredible, so incredible
that I literally went home and wrote a movie
thinking, "Okay, if this is how you make movies, I'm in."
Like, "This is fun. This was fun."
- I just would like to say one thing to your point, that—
- Go on, lady.
- Well, that you're making a genre film,
and it's supposed to be scary,
and everyone's excited about it,
but one of the great things about working for David
was that it was really — I always felt it was all about
the characters and it was all about our story.
I never felt like we were sacrificing character for plot
and for scare, and that was what — I keep sometimes forgetting
this is a horror film, because I feel like
we were telling a story of relationships—
- And by the way, if you look at the original movie...
- Yeah.
- ... it's a movie about Laurie Strode
and her dreaminess and her friends
and all of those relationships. I agree with you 100 percent.
- There's so much humour to it, too. - Ours?
- Yeah, it's not a horror comedy— - I wouldn't know, I haven't seen it.
- [Laughs] But there's a lot of humour to it, as well.
And I've always felt that the structure to a joke
and a scare are very much the same,
and just because something's scary,
it doesn't have to be totally severe.
There can be life and there can be personality to it,
and it's very clear in the film,
and it's awesome to hear that David afforded
this opportunity to play and to inject that.
- I think I've been ruined for every future job.
[Panel laughing]
I peaked. Thanks David.
- For Jamie, was it — did it feel like a flashback
to 1978 when you were there?
- Sure, I mean, it felt that way
mostly because of the way David works.
David surrounds himself with his geek friends from —
and I say that with — - Some say.
[Panel laughing]
- Well, true, but, you know, film geek friends
who make movies together, and that's how David works.
That's how John worked. Tommy Wallace and Nick Castle,
the guy who played the shape and the art director
of the movie, were film school fans.
Dean Cundey, I think, also. I mean, they are all —
it very much resembled that movie.
City streets, small town, babysitters...
It removed, as you've said, all these other movies
and just went back to this basic storytelling.
And just to add one thing from what you were all saying:
you know, terrorism is random.
It's soft targets. That's the whole idea.
You don't expect it.
I think the fact that you don't expect this,
that you have no idea — there is no rhyme, reason,
anything — is what makes it terrifying.
There's no vendetta. There is no ulterior motive.
It is just pure evil, which is what Donald Pleasence
says in the original movie, and really is what
John and Deborah, as writers, came up with,
which is that simple, pure evil
that therefore has no rhyme or reason
is the most terrifying thing you could ever imagine.
- And what I was so impressed with with this movie
is that, in the face of that —
the no reason, that meaninglessness to this violence —
your characters decide, "We're gonna stop
and confront this oppressing verse."
Whether they do or not, see the movie [laughs].
But how — David, in writing the screenplay,
when did that moment come together on the page,
in terms of how you were gonna get all these,
as you said, generation, cross-generation of women
to come together to prop each other up
so that they can collectively take on Michael?
- We just started organically
with scene one, thinking about where we'd begin
and where we'd go and who's who
and how this relates. And then, I remember,
after we finished the second act, we switched
who was doing what a little bit
and moved it around and played a little this and that,
and there's some characters that reveal things
about themselves, and we switched who would do that
and how that would... And then we —
The beauty of having three writers — it was kind of a creative
writers' room. Jeff would take a spin at a scene,
then Danny would add on to that,
and I'd reinvent that, and then they'd rewrite my work,
and so it became that. And then we spent a lot of time
on the first two acts and went in very focused
and specific, just to how we would —
- And was John involved at all? Was John on set?
- He was. I'd call him, he would give ideas,
particularly in the opening, the introduction,
and the conclusion.
Those were two big points, and then I'd ask him questions
like, "But how do we get them back in the mechanic suit?"
And he'd say, "You're on your own, kid."
[Panel laughing]
- Well, I suppose, Andi and Judy —
Jamie spoke about that detail, but was that something
that also really struck out at you
in the screenplay as something
that made the role interesting to you?
- I would have to say that, once I got to start work,
like, once I got to South Carolina and we started rehearsals
and we were all in that same room in your office
together rehearsing, was when I was like,
"Oh my god, oh my god!" I was reading it, really,
like I read everything: what does MY character do,
what does MY character say? [Laughs]
And then it started to occur to me when we began
rehearsals, personally, I was like, "This is so cool.
This is so cool that there's
three generations of Strode women."
- Yeah, I mean, I kind of had the reverse effect of that,
because I read it and I was just immediately
raptured by the three-generational story.
I didn't know who was cast yet.
Obviously I was hoping that you were signed on,
but I didn't know when I read it.
Then it wasn't until once I got to set and was rehearsing
I was like, "Oh, god [laughs], oh god."
- Well, I will say this.
You know, it's a movie about trauma,
and trauma is a generational illness,
and we know this obviously from the Holocaust,
and we've seen what happened
to generations after that trauma.
In this story, we're talking about a trauma
that occurred in 1978 to Laurie Strode,
who probably went back to high school
two days after the incident and no one ever talked about it,
and then, of course, all of that anxiety and trauma
was put into her daughter, and then all of that attempt
to NOT have that anxiety put
into her daughter, and it's a story, it's a family trauma
story, and again, without planning it,
women taking back the narrative of their lives,
which we are seeing seems to be a thing today.
[Laughing] - You know? - Yeah.
- May actually be a thing. Who knew? Wonder women.
Hallowwomen.
- Oh, I get it! - Get it? [Panel laughing]
- Hallowwomen. - Oh, now I get it.
[Panel laughing]
- Hallowwomen.
- Each generation a little bit longer to understand.
- No, but it's all good.
Hallowwomen.
- That's actually really brilliant.
- Thank you.
- All right, thank you so much.
[Creepy music]