Film Courage: So then (if I understand this right) that FINAL DESTINATION was the first
screenplay that you actually sold?
Jeffrey Reddick: That was the first one I sold.
I wrote one and it never got made but I was actually hired to write a sequel for a movie
called PUMPKINHEAD, which is one of my favorites and they are remaking it now and so hopefully
I can use my sequel idea for the sequel of the remake but before I got an agent, I got
hired because Brad Krivoy was the producer and he was taking pitch meetings and I wrote
a pitch that he liked and he basically hired me and another writer to finish the rest of
the script and then the company got bought by somebody and all of this so neither one
of our scripts ever got made but no, that was my first paying job as a writer (which
was fun).
That was a little crazy because you are like “Wow!
I am writing something that I grew up loving.”
That was the first thing that I actually sold and I’d written like 5 or 6 or 7 scripts
before A FINAL DESTINATION that never got…and rightly so for some of them when you go back
and read them, it’s like “Whoah!
These are pretty bad.”
But there’s a couple of nuggets of ideas that I might turn into something some day.
Film Courage: I’m just wondering how did it happen?
What were the details?
So you are working at New Line Cinema they had known you for years…
Jeffrey Reddick: They had known me for years.
I was trying to get a TV agent and then my friend Mark Callen was like “Oh, this would
make a great idea for a feature.”
Back in the day you could actually sell a treatment to a studio.
You didn’t have to write a whole script and because I worked at the studio, I knew
how when the winds would change very frequently so something would be hot one week and not
the next week.
I was like “Let me write a treatment, because it’s a great concept.”
And some friends of mine worked for a producer outside of the studio that had to deal with
the studio, so I’m like let me go work with him and their producer partner and bring the
idea back to the studio because I knew that would give me a better chance of getting that
set up (it was with the producer attached).
I had the treatment and then they were all grown ups and then SCREAM came out (and I
love SCREAM) and Kevin Williams is a dear friend of mine.
And the minute that came out it was like “Let’s make them all teenagers.”
I had to go rewrite the treatment to make them all teenagers and then the studio just
couldn’t get their head around certain aspects.
They were like “It’s great.
It’s cool but how can you make certain things happen.
It just doesn’t make any sense?”
And I’m like “That’s the whole point to having a horror film.”
So the studio just kept passing on it and finally the producers (it was Warren Zaid
and Craig Perry) they were like “Well, if you pass on it again, we’re going to go
to Dimension” which was kind of New Line’s rival, Miramax at the time.
And they were like “We’ll buy it!”
Film Courage: You said the magic word.
Jeffrey Reddick: So then they bought the treatment and then they hired me to write the first
draft of the script and then we went out to directors after that.
It was a pretty quick process.
We sold the original story in ’97 and the movie came out in 2000, so in Hollywood time
that’s pretty, pretty fast.
Film Courage: When you did the casting for it, how did you find the lead?
Jeffrey Reddick: Actually New Line did all the casting through there casting department.
I’d put my list together of my dream cast at the time.
But I love the cast that we ended up with.
And it’s funny because I’m friends with Devon (Sawa), he’s directing now and he’s
got a new TV show so I produced his first short that he did and he’s a really talented
guy.
We’ve actually reconnected in the last few years and he’s just a great guy.
It is funny because when I was writing the movie I was kind of (you know) trying to turn
some of the tropes on their heads and so there are very few movies that have a final guy
in it, it’s always a final girl.
So I wanted to write a movie with a final guy in it.
And his character I think definitely stands out and he’s such a great actor, too.
He did such a great job and he was CASPER, too.
It’s always funny making fun of him because he was in CASPER floating around in with Christina
Ricci when they were kids, dancing ridiculous.
Devon, if you’re watching this, ridiculous.
Film Courage: I would see him in so many things because I used to go into Blockbuster Video
all the time and I just remember “There he was again!”
[on a DVD cover].
Jeffrey Reddick: Yeah, we was really hot then, too.
I think he…ah man…there is something North?
I’m blanking on the name of it…there were some coyotes and people in the wilderness.
I’m trying to think of the name of it, I’ll try to look the movie up…but it was a really
big movie.
It was CASPER and then that one, he did IDLE HANDS…I think IDLE HANDS…I don’t know
if that was pre or post FINAL DESTINATION…I think it might have been point FINAL DESTINATION.
But yeah, he was definitely on everybody’s like ones-to-watch-list.
And we shot it in Canada so was got a lot of Canadian talent, as well.