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 It’s hard to imagine many horror fans that don’t hold at least one of Joe Dante’s films close to their heart. For children of the ‘80s such as myself, GREMLINS was a seminal release that delicately walked the line between harmless family fun and monster movie chills. It was also infused with a sense of humor that took every available chance to wink at the audience and even at itself. A few years before GREMLINS, Dante directed the criminally underrated THE HOWLING, a classic of the werewolf genre that had the misfortune of being overshadowed by the slicker, more showy AMERICAN WEREWOLF IN LONDON. Both are great movies, but HOWLING is an absolute must see for genre fans. And even before that, Dante closed out the ‘70s by wiping out a summer camp of topless beauties courtesy of some killer fish in the camp classic PIRANHA (currently being remade by Alex Aja).
Over the years, Dante’s additional contributions to the genre include a segment in TWILIGHT ZONE: THE MOVIE, the misunderstood but genius GREMLINS 2: THE NEW BATCH and two praised episodes of Showtime’s MASTERS OF HORROR entitled THE SCREWFLY SOLUTION and HOMECOMING.
Dante’s latest picture, the family 3-D horror flick THE HOLE, is already being touted as his “return to horror,” although the director makes a compelling argument that he never went away.
Chris Massolgia (CIRQUE DU FREAK) stars as Dane Thompson and Nathan Gamble (THE DARK KNIGHT) is his younger brother Lucas. Teri Polo (MEET THE FOCKERS) plays their mother Susan and Haley Bennett (THE HAUNTING OF MOLLY HARTLEY) is the girl next door Julie Campbell. When Dane, Nathan and Julie discover a mysterious hole in their basement, they decide to step inside and explore. But within the darkness the hole will unleash the individual fears and nightmares of any individual that dares to enter.
During an exclusive interview from the set of THE HOLE, Dante spoke to Bloody-Disgusting about his “return to horror,” how the business has changed over the years, the intricacies of the modern 3-D process and just what that deep, dark hole is all about.
BLOODY-DISGUSTING: What’s the story of The Hole?
JOE DANTE: It’s kind of a throwback to the pictures I was doing. The difference between this and the other horror movies that will come out is that this one is sort of family friendly. It’s not particularly gory. Kids can go with their parents. It’s not a childish movie. It has adult themes, but it’s nothing that you couldn’t take a kid to see.
BD: I spoke with Chris Massoglia a few minutes ago. He mentioned that each character sees something different in the hole.
JD: Right, it’s all personal to each different person.
BD: Can you give examples?
JD: Well, for instance Nathan Gamble, who plays Chris’ little brother, is terrified of clowns, as I’ve discovered lately that a lot of people are. I remember when I was a kid I used to think clowns were not very funny. I didn’t actually find them creepy until the Chiodo brothers made their picture and then, all of the sudden, it was like, ‘Oooh, these clowns really are creepy.’
Now there are a lot of people who have a clown phobia. I think if you do have a clown phobia, this will be a pretty scary movie. We’ve got some good clown scenes. That’s his particular fear. Haley Bennett, who plays the girl next door, has her own secrets that are revealed because of the hole. Chris’ family has yet another secret, which would probably never have come to light were it not for the fact that they opened up the hole.
BD: There have been some comparisons drawn between the plot of THE HOLE and THE GATE from 1987.
JD: It’s somewhat like THE GATE because THE GATE has people opening up a hole and terrible things coming out of it. And then there’s ALICE IN WONDERLAND too. Holes are kind of a classic literary and filmmaking tradition to contain evil things.
BD: Was the 3-D part of the draw to this project?
JD: The 3-D came later. I get offered a lot of horror films and this one was one that I just thought was better written than most. The characters seemed much more real and the scares are experienced through the characters as opposed to just trying to scare the audience.
The 3-D idea came up because it’s a small picture and it takes place in basically the basement and neighborhood in a small town. And I thought it would be nice to open this up somehow.
BD: How much do you have to be cognizant of the fact that this will play in 3-D only during the theatrical release but will also live on primarily in a 2-D form?
JD: Well, look back at The Creature from the Black Lagoon. How many people have really seen it in 3-D? Nobody remembers it was 3-D and it’s a great 3-D movie. Working in 3-D is a little different, but not so different that you can’t master it. There’s certain rules of things that are better not to do, but you can break the rules on occasion. The way you stage the scenes is pretty similar to 2-D. The other trick is that, because you are looking through two lenses, two eyes, sometimes there will be something that appears in one eye and doesn’t appear in the other eye. That can be very annoying, so you have to watch out. There’s a lot of technical things.
BD: Is this your first time doing 3-D?
 JD: I did a 3-D 70mm film for Bush Gardens called THE HORNET LIGHTHOUSE. That was a completely different kind of 3-D. When these new Red cameras came along, it became much more maneuverable than the old bulky two-camera systems of 35. And the stabilization of the digital image is so much better than it was for film. There’s no weave. In digital, they are rock solid steady images and you don’t have any of those problems aligning them.
BD: Tell me about the cast of THE HOLE.
JD: Chris is in CIRQUE DU FREAK, which has still not come out. I think he’s going to get some heat off of that. He’s a good actor and a good kid. Terri Polo is in it from the FOCKERS movies and she’s a great person to have on the set. She’s a lot of fun, she lightens everything up and she’s a really good actress. She takes the Mom part that is so deadly in these kind of pictures and really turns it into a real character that you care about. Haley Bennett, who is kind of starting out, was in MARLEY AND ME and had the lead in THE HAUNTING OF MOLLY somethingrother. She’s a very good actress and really gorgeous, but still with the girl next door quality. And then there’s Nathan Gamble, who is the little kid in this movie, is one of the best actors I’ve ever worked with. He was in DARK KNIGHT, Gary Oldman’s son. He is such a good actor. He’s fun on the set and he’s a smart kid. He really has the gift and I think if he wants to, he could take it anywhere.
BD: A lot of directors complain about working with kids, but they obviously aren’t an issue for you.
JD: I love kids. I never have a problem working with kids. The only problem working with kids is that you don’t have much time with them. You are constantly juggling your schedule to figure out how to get the work done before he turns into a pumpkin and has to go home. But I never have problems with kids.
BD: You’ve mastered walking that line between what’s scary and maybe too scary in a “family” horror movie. Can you still get away with what you did in GREMLINS?
JD: Well, we didn’t get away with it in GREMLINS. That created the PG-13 rating. GREMLINS was rated PG and people complained. GREMLINS and TEMPLE OF DOOM both came our from Spielberg the same year and they both got a lot of ire from parents. It led to them changing the rating.
All I know is that the time that you release the movie and what’s happened around it colors what you can get away with. You can go back and look at some R-rated pictures and they are so cut, you wonder why they even gave it an R. It’s a judgment call and all the people change at the MPAA. It’s not a consistent group and you’re never allowed to know who they are or why they voted for what they did. It’s a very strange system and it’s very inconsistent and I think very biased towards studio films.
BD: How long an editing process is this and how much does 3-D add to the process?
JD: This hasn’t been that bad. Only at the end is the 3-D consuming. We edit the picture normally. We look at the dailies in 3-D. I can look at the 3-D here on the set while I’m shooting. But a lot of that detail work with the convergences is done later. I’ll see the picture in [full] 3-D probably four months after I’m finished editing.
We have a trailer that they’re converting the 3-D form, meaning they have to take both sides of what you’ve shot and basically turn it into 3-D. That’s a time consuming process, but they do like to go with a 3-D trailer.
BD: Is the plan to release the trailer before one of the 3-D releases later this year?
JD: I’m sure that’s what they’re hoping, but it depends who gets the picture. The problem with 3-D movies is that there’s only so many theaters. What you don’t want to do is you don’t want to open against a 3-D movie and lose half of the theaters. The other problem is, the Miley Cyrus movie played for a couple of weeks and then the U2 movie was supposed to follow. Well, the Miley Cyrus movie was much more successful than they’d anticipated, so the U2 picture was not able to play in as many theaters as it had been booked in. These are the problems that they have to take into account because it’s not like a normal movie.
BD: Do you have an idea of when THE HOLE will be released?
JD: They’re talking about 2010. All the kids will be grown up and in college, but what are you going to do?
BD: That limits the possibilities of THE HOLE 2.
JD: Well, you just think, what if some other picture rips us off before we get out? That could happen without anybody even seeing it.
BD: You were quoted in a recent interview as saying “horror doesn’t really appeal to you,” which shocked a lot of fans.
JD: Boy, I can’t imagine saying that. I’ve only spent my life watching horror movies. I may have meant gore doesn’t appeal to me. I love horror movies. I may have also been reacting to the fact that I get kind of typed.
BD: You also mentioned that you often get overwhelmed with all the horror scripts you’re sent.
JD: I do. As a filmmaker, you want to broaden the range of what you do and not revisit the same old tricks of what you’ve done before. You could easily just keep cranking out pictures that draw on your previous successes, but that’s not interesting for me. I’ve already done that. You look at all my fantasy horror pictures, there are a lot of recurring elements. Kids, the fantasy...
BD: Maybe the goriest movie you ever did was THE HOWLING.
JD: The earlier movies were much more gory because the ‘70s and ‘80s were much more [gory]. The ‘70s was an astounding period for films. If you look at ‘70s exploitation movies, you would not even believe that that world was real. Look at PIRANHA. We killed an entire summer camp full of kids. I don’t think you could do that today.
BD: On that note, do you have any involvement in the remake?
JD: No.
BD: Do you know what’s next for you?
JD: No, don’t know. Just glad to be in the business, glad to still be here.
  
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