Interviews
[Sundance ’12] Interview: ‘Black Rock’ Director and Star Katie Aselton
Black Rock (review) sold to LD Entertainment immediately following its first midnight screening in the Sundance Film Festival’s Park City at Midnight Category.
Directed by Katie Aselton, the film stars Aselton, Lake Bell and Kate Bosworth as three friends on a camping trip who run afoul of three hunters who turn violent. It becomes a gritty fight to survive in the woods.
By Thursday of Sundance, Aselton was as exhausted as we were. She even offered to have a snuggle session instead of an interview, but I wasn’t smooth enough to take her up on it so I just went with a normal interview. Some spoilers follow in our talk, but they’re good spoilers about violence and nudity! Q: For a long time, man has been the most dangerous game. Is woman taking over as the most dangerous game?
KA: I think women secretly have always been the most dangerous, the most dangerous beasts. We’re fierce. Men have it all on the outside. We’ve got some fierceness on the inside. When push comes to shove, I think we can take someone down pretty quickly.
Q: Were you a fan of that story in all its incarnations?
KA: I loved The Most Dangerous Game. I remember I read it my freshman year in high school and was obsessed with it. It was I think our very first assignment in English the very first day of school freshman year. I love that story. It’s amazing. I love survival stories. I love when humans are sort of forced to go primal. It’s exciting.
Q: Kate Bosworth’s character jokes that she has cancer but then she’s just messing with her friends. Did you ever consider really giving her cancer so she’d have nothing to lose when it really went down?
KA: No, that just felt a little melodramatic for me. I liked the idea, because that’s what friends do. You f*** with each other. She knew how to get her friends on board and she knew, as ultimately happened in the movie, when push comes to shove, the petty stuff falls away which is what she was sort of initially doing. I didn’t want anybody to have nothing to lose. I wanted everyone to have everything to lose.
Q: In a movie like this these days, do you have to explain there’s no cell phone reception?
KA: I think you do. I really do. It’s really frustrating. Cell phones have killed our sense of isolation, but in the state of Maine it’s very possible that you have no cell reception. Although I will say ironically, when we were shooting on the mainland, we had horrible cell reception and we would take a 30 minute boat ride out to the island where we were shooting, and I had 3G. Isn’t that weird? I could watch movies on my phone.
Q: It’s an easy enough thing in one line, because everyone is thinking it now.
KA: And Lake handled it so effortlessly. It was such an easy throwaway.
Q: In old movies they still had to have someone cut the phone lines.
KA: Yeah, exactly. For us it was did the phone get water on it in the boat? What exactly happens? Where are the other cell phones? It’s a stupid thing to have to overcome but you do because then you’re like, “Why didn’t you just call someone?”
Q: Thank you for the body warmth scene with you and Lake Bell. Is a little nudity a must in horror movies?
KA: Yeah, that’s the thing we were sort of playing with. There are certain thriller genre rules that we followed but I made sure to do them on my terms. So yes, I show boobs but I do it in my way and a way that I feel comfortable with.
Q: And you don’t expect it in a movie with A-list cast because they all have contracts.
KA: No, Lake was totally down for it which was great. She’s like, “I’ll go as far you will. You’re with me. Let’s just do it together.”
Q: Did you have any mixed feelings about making soldiers with PTSD the villains?
KA: I did. I was actually really concerned that we did it right and for me it wasn’t that they all had PTSD. It was that I think that one guy really was damaged emotionally, but the loyalty, the fierce loyalty between those guys bonds them together and gels them so tightly that Alex, played by Anslem Richardson, goes along with it because, you know, you follow your seniors. That’s what you do. So for me, I was really inspired by Restrepo and the guys in Restrepo. There was one in particular who had the little wool beanie cap and he looked a lot like Jay Paulson. He was like this wirey thin boy who leaves a boy, a video game playing boy who’s shy and sweet and comes back from that experience a changed human being. He’s not a boy anymore and he’s not a man and he’s just sort of vacant in the face and he’s not okay. That really affected me a lot because it was important for me that these guys were not just random psychopaths, that there was a reason why they were doing what they were doing. And the fact that they were this so tightly knit tribe of boys, when something happens to one of them it really sets the other one off. That is how he knows how to handle things now.
Q: I would even imagine the motivation for the guy who attacks you first is some form of PTSD.
KA: Yeah, you know, I mean these guys were back for 18 days. The fact of the matter is, not to get super political or opinionated about the whole thing, but we bring our boys home and we dump ‘em. We don’t do anything for them so the fact that their backstory for these guys is their way of assimilating back into social culture was to get a weekend away just the three of us and be alone. It’s too much to be back in society right now, elt’s all go on a weekend. But yeah, it’s not surprising that their triggers are really quick.
Q: Was shooting on the island like a real camping trip?
KA: Well, we didn’t shoot the whole movie on an island. We used a lot of the mainland which that coast is so beautiful.
Q: But out in the woods.
KA: Out in the woods, yeah, Lake and Kate and I peed in the woods. That’s just what you do.
Q: And the night shoots?
KA: Those were tricky. It was physically and emotionally a very demanding film. The nights were cold and dark and wet and you’re in the woods. The scene where we’re crawling through the woods when we’re looking for our boat, Kate was in the lead and we’re in the woods. She had no idea where she was putting her hand down. It was dark and creepy and disgusting, so they were pretty brave.
Q: How cold was it?
KA: The night we shot the water scene, the water temperature was 45 degrees. The air temperature was 43. It was cold.
Q: When you’re shivering after that, was that more acting or was it real?
KA: Oh no, it was freezing. It was freezing cold. That month of June, I have no idea what happened. The whole spring last year in Maine was so cold. We went to go location scout in April and there was a blizzard. In April. It was like April 4 and we got a foot of snow. So all of our pictures of location scouting, everything was covered with snow. I was like, “I’m pretty sure I remember this being a beach but I don’t know if there’s rocks under it. I think it’s a beach.” So then we got there in May and it rained the entire time while we were in preproduction. June 1 our first day of shooting the sun came out, thank God, but it didn’t get any warmer. We were freezing. What we’d set aside for wardrobe didn’t work for us at all. We were frigidly cold. It was crazy. June was freezing and then July, as soon as we left, it was like 80 degrees every day.
Q: The guys still are physically muscle-wise stronger so you have to work really hard to win. Is that another frustrating cliché? It’s a good thing to empower women that they can beat up guys, but sometimes unrealistic when these skinny girls take out musclemen.
KA: Yeah, and I think what we showed is you really kind of couldn’t kick a guy’s ass. The first death was by chance. The second one was against an injured guy and the third one was two against one and barely, barely, barely we pulled that one out. For me it was really playing with the idea of who wants to live more. I think that was the girls in this case.
Q: Congratulations on the sale.
KA: Thank you. We’re taking over the world.
Q: What kind of release are they giving you?
KA: You know, I haven’t sat down with them and really hashed out all the details but I know they love the film and are really behind it and are excited for a lot of people to see it.
Q: Have you gotten to see anything else here?
KA: I just saw California Solo last night. I saw Safety Not Guaranteed. Now that things are starting to slow down is when I get to see some movies which is great. What’s really fun is that there are a lot of people that were here in 2010 when I was here with Freebie back with their next film. It’s like we’re in the same class.
Interviews
“Pretty Little Liars: Summer School” Series Creators on Bigger Slasher Season, Horror Influences, and Spooky Spaghetti
The slasher-themed relaunch of “Pretty Little Liars” from series creators/writers/executive producers Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa (“Riverdale,” “Chilling Adventures of Sabrina”) and Lindsay Calhoon Bring (“Chilling Adventures of Sabrina”) is back with the brand new season “Pretty Little Liars: Summer School,“ plunging the final girls into a summer of horror.
“Summer School“ begins TODAY (May 9), only on Max.
After surviving last season’s Millwood massacre and unmasking “A,“ Mouse (Malia Pyles), Noa (Maia Reficco), Faran (Zaria), Imogen (Bailee Madison) and Tabby (Chandler Kinney) are back to process their trauma and get on with their lives. Except they’ll be forced to take on summer school. When a mysterious new villain emerges, summer school won’t be the only thing derailing the girls’ plans for summer fun and romance (read our review).
Bloody Disgusting spoke with Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa and Lindsay Calhoon Bring about the second season, which continues the heavy emphasis on horror and packs in the references. That even includes an homage to Bloody Disgusting!
The pair also reveal more about this season’s threat, and what lies ahead.
“Pretty Little Liars: Original Sin“ saw the core five survive their violent confrontation with “A,“ presenting a unique scenario in creating a slasher centered around not one but five Final Girls. That presented a unique challenge for the writers this season.
Aguirre-Sacasa explains, “It’s funny, your first question literally cuts to the heart of basically every conversation we have in the writer’s room, which is most slasher movies or shows have one final girl. But the very essence, heart, and DNA of our show are that we have five final girls. Six, if you count Kelly [Mallory Bechtel]. One of the tropes of a final girl is that there’s always an amazing chaser test at the end of the movie. We landed, I think, pretty early on the idea that Bloody Rose would test each girl as though preparing them to be the final girl for the final test. So that was a very conscious decision early on, and that would be a cool way to create horror set pieces for each girl.“
“It was,“ Calhoon Bring adds. “In season one, our ultimate final girl ended up, story-wise, thematically, with our sins of the mothers being tied to the child, and the ultimate sinner being Imogen’s mother. Our ultimate final Final girl was Imogen. This season going in, we knew that we wanted to test each girl, as Roberto said, but we also did love this idea of one of our little liars being the final Final Girl. So without giving too much away, our finale does center on one of our liars as the ultimate Final Girl this season.“
There’s a distinct tonal shift this season, with “Summer School“ much lighter than the grim “Original Sin.“ While the setting contributes to that, Bloody Disgusting asked the showrunners whether the shift in horror – embracing everything from creepypastas to cult horror – informed that tone shift in any way.
Calhoon Bring answers, “We always approach every episode, every season with story first, character first, and what are our little liars going through? We knew that with season two, we didn’t want to forget the events of season one. We didn’t want them to jump past them. We wanted them to live in them and move through them. At the same time, per your tone question, we thought, ‘Gosh, season one was really heavy. The girls were grappling with really dark, grounded horrors and dramas, as well as the heightened horror of having a Michael Myers chase them with a knife.‘ We did want to infuse more fun into this. Summer, to us, did feel like the perfect backdrop for fun, slasher horror, a little more fun for the girls bringing in Dr. Sullivan [Annabeth Gish] to help them work through their traumas, but also give them permission to have summer flings, have summer jobs, have a good time. So we did consciously do a bit of a tonal shift as well.“
Creepypastas influence the horror in a huge way this season, both with the villain, Bloody Rose, and the mysterious “Spooky Spaghetti“ website. Aguirre-Sacasa breaks down the idea behind “Spooky Spaghetti“ and a surprising source of inspiration for its creation.
“Obviously, one of the inspirations for season two was the Slender Man,“ the showrunner says. “Lindsay and I love not the Slender Man fictional movie but the Slender Man documentary, and we are obsessed with the Slender Man true crime case. I think one of the things we think is so terrifying about the Slender Man is that you kind of don’t know if he’s real or not. You don’t know if it’s this supernatural figure that crossed over into the real world. So, we needed a website that held that legend, and thus Spooky Spaghetti was born. One of the really fun things about it that we liked was that it took one of our favorite Pretty Little Liars, Mouse, and put her at the heart of the mystery in a really organic, cool way. Sometimes, that can be the hardest thing to do. But I remember when we got the cut of the first episode, I think, Lindsay, you got to see it before me, and you called, and you were like, ‘Oh my God, here’s what really works. Spooky Spaghetti.‘ We agree.
“But for sure, listen, I think we all check Deadline and Bloody Disgusting ten times a day, so it’s an homage to Bloody Disgusting as well.“
The default aim for slasher sequels is to go bigger than before, and “Summer School“ takes that to heart with more elaborate, visually creative set pieces this season. Especially the more Bloody Rose tests the Liars.
“We have such an amazing team, and we love talking about them,“ Calhoon Bring says of this season’s sets. “Our production designer, Brett Tanzer, and his set decorator, Lauren [Crawford]. We also have an amazing locations manager, Dave Lieber, who has so much fun. Sometimes, the locations will inspire a story for us, too, because as he’s looking around the locations in the upstate New York towns that we’re seeing, he’ll send us photos and say, ‘Hey, I found this amazing roller rink.‘ Then we think, ‘Well, we have to use that amazing roller rink. We have to find a space for this.‘ ‘Hey, there’s this an abandoned campground. What could we do? Can we do an outdoor movie at an abandoned campground? That would be amazing.‘
“We worked very closely with our team to make sure that every episode was very special and had a special set piece. A big ongoing conversation for us that was a tricky thing to do actually was that we knew early on that we wanted Faran to be a lifeguard, and we knew that we wanted to have a pool as a summer set piece. Those conversations happen so early, and finding a pool isn’t as easy as it sounds. It’s like finding the right pool, making sure that it’s the right aesthetic, that it’s broken down, that there are woods nearby, that it feels scary, that it’s operational, that we can use it. So, those conversations happened even sometimes earlier than we were writing the episodes.”
Aguirre-Sacasa elaborates, “Just to piggyback off that, the day that Lindsay and I got emails from Dave, our locations manager, for the church where Redemption House, that storyline was set. When we toured it, it was like, ‘This is the creepiest.‘ Literally, it’s next to a cemetery, and across the street from it is another cemetery. It’s like, ‘Yeah, we’re going to be setting up shop here.‘ We just moved in for the season. It was really great.”
While the series creators won’t spoil all the horror fun ahead in “Pretty Little Liars: Summer School” – but definitely expect the new season to really embrace all of your summer horror favorites in a big way – the pair do offer some exciting teases for what’s ahead.
“We’re so happy that we have Annabeth Gish with us, reprising her role as Dr. Sullivan,“ Calhoon Bring tells us. “Roberto, you’ve mentioned this; one of our favorite things in horror movies is the amazing monologue that a harrowed, usually final girl gives talking about her trauma. Roberto invoked Phoebe Cates in Gremlins, talking about that ill-fated night. We love those. We think that Annabeth, as Dr. Sullivan, delivers a tour de force horror monologue and a horror sequence in our penultimate [episode] that we’re very, very excited for people to see.“
“Yeah, it is kind of like Jason’s mother’s monologue about Jason drowning,“ Aguirre-Sacasa added. “It’s about Dr. Loomis talking about Michael Myers and the devil’s eyes. We love that. I think we can also tease in our finale. It’s our favorite episode of the season, the finale, and knowing that we had done essentially a handful of final girl chases and tests throughout, we knew that our finale had to be pretty apocalyptic and pretty epic. So we looked at some of our favorite movies like Midsommar and Texas Chain Saw Massacre for those truly apocalyptic horror movie endings that are just so gonzo, and without spoiling much, we wanted to do our version of that.
“And it is pretty harrowing, pretty harrowing.”
Which Final Girl will become the ultimate Final Girl this season? “Pretty Little Liars: Summer School” debuts exclusively on Max on May 9 at 12:00 a.m. PT with two episodes, followed by one new episode airing weekly through June 20.
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