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4-22-05
But more on that later. This time out, in honor of the remake and revival of AMITYVILLE HORROR, I sent my protégé in pulp, Gavin Heffernen, to grab some And now, on with the SHOCK AND ROLL, a tantalizing true terror tale I call… 
I know what it’s like to be haunted, for I lived in a haunted house. To be accurate, it was an apartment. It did not have the eyes of hell looking out from its gables, like that famous home of horror in Amityville. Nor was it built on ancient Indian burial ground a la “Poltergeist”. But the soul of the undead and unrested dwelled there, and that soul made itself known to me… This is not a story. This is the truth. It was 1992. Jersey bred, I had been in California for two years sowing my dream of a film career. My roommate Al and I had spent those years in the Valley in a “corporate housing” apartment complex commonly known as the “Oakwoods”; basically a way station for showbiz people in transit living month to month. They did everything they could at the “Oakwoods” to give you a false sense of stability. Hell, they’d even provide a photograph of a pretend “family” to go along with your fully furnished two bedroom and bath, should you wish to further the facade. Six months of that mundane madness and I was ready to do a George Lutz and take an axe to that pretend “family’, whomever those framed smiling faces might be. Instead, I moved to Venice. Though quite apparent, not many folks realize, myself included at the time, that Venice, California is named after the famed Venice of Italy. Not just named, but designed, by a long dead impresario named Abbott Kinney, to be a microcosmic replica of that very same city, canals included. Turn of the century, Venice, California was just that. In lieu of pavement, there were waterways. Instead of cars, boats. All this surrounding an infamous amusement pier complete with silent movie palaces, roller coasters and speakeasies. Paradise always has its price, and the toll paid for Abbott Kinney’s dream was that it did not last for long. Floods, fires and earthquakes inevitably ravaged Italy’s California doppelganger, and by the early 1970’s, the pier was gone, the canals filled in and plowed over with cement. Death in Venice indeed. With any death, however, remnants of life do remain, and the soul of Abbott Kinney can be found today in a concise and contained area appropriately, if obviously, known as the “Venice Canals”. These liquid arteries stream through a three block area of extravagant homes perched on the water’s edge, an inclusive, exclusive sub-community of Venice proper. Only the rich and fortunate can afford to live there, yet with grateful bafflement, the ‘starving artist’ that I was that early spring of ’92 somehow found myself the occupant of a Venice Canal address. I should have known… The place certainly did not look haunted. It still doesn’t, save the constant “For Rent” sign that comes and go with regularity every five or six months. It was built in the late 60’s, certainly, one would surmise, not enough time to acquire a ghost. But looks are deceiving. And I was deceived. Roommate Al had been gleeful the day we moved in. It was his coup. Finally, his endless cocktail hours socializing with the beach locals had paid off. He had traded Jell-O shots with a former Z Boy. Twenty years ago a teenage member of the mythic surfing, skating “Lords of Doggtown”, this guy was now a profitable realtor peddling properties in between chasing waves. He took a liking to Al, so much so that he offered him a cheap lease on a primo spot on the Canals. It should have cost a fortune, but it only cost me and Al a grand between the two of us. Z Boy explained the bargain on the “transitional” nature of the Canals at the time. You see, the waterways were being emptied and cleaned, part of the conservationists’ efforts to make a better life for the multitudes All I owned was on the moving truck we rented for that day. Monster models. Laser discs. Books. Photo albums. A computer with a hard drive containing scraps of scripts I hoped to sell. And yes, my clothes. My garb. Al’s shit was also crammed into that four wheeled box, and it took us many trips up and down the outdoor staircase carting it all to the second floor of that gray duplex. There was a bottom apartment and a top. We were the top. We never did bother getting to know the heavy set woman who lived alone with her seven cats downstairs. Not that she ever made any effort to know us. She certainly didn’t bring out the welcome wagon on moving day, though she did peek through her blinds more than once or twice. We must have looked like Laurel and Hardy, balancing furniture on our backs, arguing over whether or not we had remembered to lock the rental truck door. Vagrants were, and still are, common to Venice, the Canals included. An open moving van full of goodies could damn well prove enticing. And so it really was no surprise to me when dusk settled on an empty truck and an empty stomach that I couldn’t find my duffel bag of California fashion duds while Al went out to pick up a pizza and a couple of well deserved six packs. Nonetheless, it was a major annoyance, a major drag, a major expense I couldn’t afford. I checked every crevice and corner of that near vacant apartment; the living room, big bedroom, small bedroom, all the while childishly cursing and blaming the fates for the awful prologue to this brand new chapter of my life. Of course I knew I had no one but myself to blame. I had ignored Alan’s warning. I had left the van door open. And now I stood in the center of my new apartment, with its bright white walls, high domed ceiling, its large parameters sparsely filled by my dozen boxes, boxes quickly tallied with a cursory glance... Here I stood facing my future with only the shirt on my back and the jeans on my ass to clothe me, a naked babe in the woods. I laid down on my bed, punched the wall. Within seconds, Alan stood in my doorway, pizza in hand, frown on his face. He knew I was upset. I spilled forth about the bag of clothes, the money I didn’t have that it would cost me to replace them, my anger at the Gods. He stopped me. Shook his head. Walked me out into the living room and pointed... I should have been relieved. Instead, a chill crept over my body. For the bag lay in the center of the room. One would have to be blind not to have seen it, much less walk across the room without tripping over it. Yet a few minutes ago, it was nowhere to be found. Nowhere. I smiled, brushed it off as an oversight as much for my own sake as for Al’s. But the feeling in my stomach told me something else. That feeling you get when you know your lover’s gonna leave you in the morning even though they’re lying right next to you in the middle of the night. Premonition. That’s what it was. Something ominous was in the air of my intended paradise. I never saw it coming. The second hit came the very next day. I had gone to bed without pizza still shaking, but not wanting to admit it. I had to be at work early, a production house that made TV commercials. Surely not the Hollywood I dreamed of conquering, but, hey, it was a start. As I made my way out the front door, I He looked at me the way I must have looked at him when he pointed out my bag of clothes. Confusion, then a strange concern. He swore he had put the camera in the closet of the bedroom with the bath. In fact, he remembered distinctly, as it was his way of “staking claim”, he laughingly, nervously, confessed. The chill was back in my spine. I nodded. Left for work. En route, I passed my new mailbox. A batch of envelopes were there. Junk mail already? Then I realized it was addressed to the previous occupant. And I couldn’t believe it. The previous occupant was none other than an English bloke I worked with at my production office, an amiable chap named Nick Hipsley Cox. Talk about a small world. I couldn’t wait to tell Nick of this coincidence, and, once at the office, I spilled the beans. I now lived in his former abode. He looked at me, frowned. “Then you’ve met the ghost,” he stated, his British matter of factness thundering in my head. He then put his arm around me and whisked me to the water cooler. “Have you chosen your room yet, mate?” he whispered in hushed, conspiratorial tone. I told him I had not, to which he offered the advice that I take the smaller room, allowing Al to inhabit the larger, more “haunted” one. The feeling in my gut grew stronger. I’d had enough of the conversation. I didn’t want to believe it, yet I knew everything about it was true. I thanked Nick, went about my day in a daze.
The night brought another restless slumber. My nervous bladder led me through the hallway to the bathroom several times. All I could think of was the hide and go seek with my clothes, the camera, and Nick’s prophetic statement… You’ve met the ghost… Actually, I hadn’t. But I was about to. On my fourth trip to the john, I heard a commotion in the hall. Fearing “something”, I entered the corridor to find the way completely blocked by an open closet door, a door that was not open only moments ago. I closed it shut only to discover its entire contents of sheets, pillows and bedding piled in a heap upon the floor. And then the scream came. Al’s scream. The cry of a child as siphoned through a man. I ran into his room. Al was bolt upright in his bed, clutching his throat, waving at the air, tears streaming down his face. I had never seen Al look like this. A laid back stoner, little rocked this guy out of his mellow shell. Little, other than that which was right in front of him, barely even ever registered. But here he was, shaking with fright, swearing that someone had just been in his room, clamping their hands around his throat. I checked his neck. Sure enough, black and blue. I told Al it was all a bad dream that led to him choking himself. Blamed it on the Jane. With Al reminding me it was acid that led to such hallucinations and not his beloved pot, I crawled off to sleep in my bed, silently grateful I had made the choice to give him the “bigger room”. Grateful, and guilty. But I knew my guilt would reap its sentence, and it did... For the next five days, I tried to go about my business as if all were normal. At work, it was. At home, it was not. Items disappeared and reappeared. Cupboards opened and closed by themselves. Odd tappings at the window would stir my sleep, dust and pebbles would blow down on me from the roof as I entered the apartment despite the lack of a breeze. But nothing could compare with what my roommate faced on a nightly basis. The figure continued to haunt him. The invisible hands still throttled his throat. A disembodied head hovered at the foot of the bed. His cries kept me awake, till one night I finally broke down and told him of my conversation with Nick. He looked at me with anger. Why didn’t I tell him? But we both knew the answer. Neither of us had wanted to admit to the other that we shared our new dwelling with a third, unknown occupant. Confusion had turned to fear and now had become venom at the thought that our lease on Heaven was actually for Hell. I had always wondered why the Lutz family didn’t just get up and leave 311 Ocean Avenue the minute they uncovered the red room or encountered Jody the Pig. Now I knew. This was my home. MY home. I needed, wanted, so badly for things to work out on my lovely canals, the thought of being chased out by a ghost was downright ridiculous. Fuck the ghost, if there was such a thing. Al and I made up our mind. We were staying. We lasted two more days. The first was uneventful, save for a weird crystalline substance Al found on his bedspread. Half hearted jokes about “ghost jism” couldn’t still the memory I had of a history channel documentary about the haunted house in Amityville, particularly a scene in which demonologists Ed and Lorraine Warren described finding ectoplasm on the staircase of the Lutz home, ectoplasm being the stuff ghosts supposedly leave behind in their wake, a ‘weird crystalline substance” exactly like what Al found on his bed… The second day was a bit more eventful. It was a Saturday. I spent the morning setting up the living room, placing the couch, the bookcases, the stereo and media center. Anyone who knows me knows I am very specific about how I like my surroundings. Symmetrical would best describe it. And so, the media center had a bookcase on one side and one of equal size on the other. The couch was bookended by twin coffee tables. Framed movie posters adorned the walls in balanced display. This was my way, but it was not Alan’s. He found harmony in a more haphazard décor. In other words, a pack rat. And so when I came back from a lunch break, I was furious, but not surprised, when I found everything piled in a corner in the room. The posters, the TV, the stereo, the couch, everything all in one corner as if a giant hand had swept them all aside. I banged on Alan’s door, my repudiation speech ready to go. He answered, looking like he had been sleeping for the last 24 hours. I showed him the living room and explained how less than a half an hour ago, everything was neatly in its place. His eyes went wide, pleading. He had, in fact, been sleeping all morning. He had not been in the living room, in fact, had had not been anywhere other than his bed, anywhere at all. I felt like Jimmy Stewart in the scene in Alfred Hitchcock’s “Vertigo” where the camera zooms in while dollying back. The surreal rush of acknowledgement of something you don’t want to face captured in a single move. I backed against the wall. Everything seemed to be spinning. On the surface, a few mundane possessions scattered in the corner, but beneath the physical dimension, proof positive in my heart and soul that forces unknown, unseen, perhaps unpleasant, lived side by side with me in my home. We went and visited Z Boy. We had signed a one year lease with a two month deposit. Knowing Z Boy’s sleazy reputation, we were expecting a showdown. But the minute we walked in to his beachfront office, he immediately held out his hands in peace. He knew! The bastard knew why we had come! He knew of the ‘ghost”, he knew why my friend Nick had left, and he knew we had come for the same reason. More importantly, he knew the law, and knew he had broken it. For as he fumbled apologies and immediately offered us out of the lease with a not so paltry re-location fee, he told us of a little known civil ordinance involving landlords and tenants. A little known code that states that in addition to disclosing if a murder or suicide has occurred, landlords must inform And so, we broke the lease. We packed our bags. We got the fuck out. I went back to Jersey, spent some time with my mom. Nothing in life can truly prepare you for dealing with a situation such as the one I had gone through. You don’t really want to tell too many people for fear of ridicule or disbelief. Especially if you make your living scaring people. Or, in my case. If you had taken a “relocation fee” knowing full well it really meant “keep your mouth shut”. Keep my mouth shut I did. Till now. It’s hard to keep a secret. But I guess I figure enough time’s gone by. Or maybe I just feel guilty. I did run into Z Boy not so long ago. He was still doing Jell-O shots at the same sandy bar. When he saw me, he smiled. Inebriated, he recounted his days with the Lords of Doggtown, those skaters by this point made famous by a documentary film and pending studio blockbuster. One story the film had left out was about a drug dealer who lived in the top apartment of a duplex on the Venice Canals. A dealer who dealt dope to teenager surfers, until a deal went bad and he found himself the recipient of a bullet to the skull. It was Z Boy’s dad who scraped the doomed dealer’s brains off the walls of the larger of the two bedrooms in the waterfront apartment. The very same apartment the man’s son had rented to me… As they say, one good ghost story deserves another. Arguably, THE AMITYVILLE HORROR is the most famous ghost story of all time. Most likely because Personally, I always preferred the 1982 sequel, the underrated AMITYVILLE POSSESSION (and thank you MGM, for finally Hell, I’m all for remakes. Just did one myself. I believe every story is worth retelling in each new generation’s language. And God knows, as a filmmaker, I applaud the efforts of anyone who completes a motion picture. But when passion is replaced with such obvious commercialism, it’s hard to get excited about a movie such as the remake of AMITYVILLE HORROR. I mean, even the people who made the film don’t seem all that excited about it. Usually, my Shock and Roll interviews are done over a shared meal, a la Mick Garris (who’s truly passionate RIDING THE BULLET has just debuted on DVD), comprise an excited midnight phone call from London a la Edgar Wright, or entail a visit to a friend’s home, a la Paul Stanley. With AMITYVILLE HORROR, the publicity folks were so adamant about controlling access to the filmmakers, they wouldn’t even allow for a private conversation with Scott Kosar, the film’s screenwriter. Instead, they granted access to a controlled, roundtable discussion at a sanitized posh hotel where journalists would compete for attention by shouting inane questions to overwhelmed director Andrew Douglas and equally bemused cast members Michelle George and Ryan Reynolds. But more on that later. This time out, in honor of the remake and revival of AMITYVILLE HORROR, I sent my protégé in pulp, Gavin Heffernen, to grab some interviews with remake stars Ryan Reynolds and Melissa George, along with the film’s producer, Andrew Form, and its director, Andrew Douglas. Gavin was a Production Assistant on DETROIT ROCK CITY and has turned into a full blown filmmaker in his own right. He was kind enough to take over my journalistic duties so I could head to San Francisco for the Fearless Tales Genre Fest, a wonderful film festival run by the tireless Michael Davidson showcasing independent horror films by upcoming and established genre directors. If you missed out, make sure to attend (or submit) next year! But Big Macs sell. And already AMITYVILLE HORROR has proven itself to be a box office champ. And yes, it does provide some decent thrills throughout its shotgun paced unspooling. But is it memorable? Will it haunt you forever like a really great ghost story? True, those Macs are tasty, but unlike a superb sirloin from some one-of-a-kind steakhouse, do you ever recall one particular Big Mac a cut above the other billions served? Flicks like the current AMITYYVILLE HORROR are the golden arches of Hollywood. For God’s Sake, Get Out!!!!!!!!!!! Take it away, Gavin… ANDREW FORM Why a remake of AMITYVILLE HORROR? Most remakes were offered to us after “Chainsaw”. I personally grew up on Long Island and I had been to the house where this happened, which led to us talking about taking this movie that made $85 in 1979, and retelling this story that was rooted in How did you choose the director? Same as CHAINSAW. Michael Bay wanted to take a commercial director from the world he came from, TV commercials. Someone familiar with a set. A great shooter. Andrew Douglas came in and pitched us the movie he wanted to make. By the way, we’re going to do another CHAINSAW. A prequel, three years prior. Will it be as violent? It may be more violent. It’s funny, you become totally desensitized. I remember showing this thing to New Line. You’re standing there, its like “Goddamn, this is really violent”. You can organically feel their response... MELISSA GEORGE What drew you to the project? I was reading the script and all I could think was ‘This is a really good script with a strong woman’. Lots of good acting scenes. Not just a horror film where I’m getting slashed apart and my clothes torn off. I liked that there was a little story to it. And then they said it’s actually a remake. I said, “Really??” “Yeah it’s a 1970 film”, and I was born later than 1970 so I didn’t know that... but it was beautiful that I didn’t know those things and that I hadn’t seen the original film when I auditioned. In many ways, I felt the responsibility of the character because I really felt the Kathy Lutz character is a window for the audience in many ways. The way she processes this information is very Are you a fan of horror movies? When they’re well done. I’m a tremendous fan of the Hitchcock movies. What’s exciting about this movie is that it’s set in the 70s, so every decision is stylish. All the wallpaper. when you look closer, you can see that every single detail of this world has been transformed into this timeframe. Any weird things happen during the filming? We were filming at the boathouse and the police came along the waterfront and told us they’d found a dead body come to the surface. Everybody looked around and got really freaked out! What was the scariest part for you? Have you seen the roof scene yet? That was freaky. I didn’t like that too much, because for that whole crawling thing, that little girl really is right by the edge. That whole thing was for real. No green screen. She had a crane with 2 pieces of skinny wire above her head and she was balancing by herself, and then in postproduction, they blacked out the wire. What about you, did you have a wire? Yeah they put me up in a crane and then they dropped water on me from the roof, and I was like “Thank you very much” and then I’m leaning over and they’re like hanging wire around my waist. And in the midst of this all, little girl was hanging over the edge and she was playing with me and pretending that she had been hung as a joke. She was dangling off the edge, 80 feet off the ground, and I’m scared and this little girl isn’t frightened at all. What kind of research did you do? I read the book. I don’t know how much is made up and how much isn’t, but it makes such a good story. Did you ever want to go to the real house? No! I wasn’t about to get o a plane and go there! This freaked me out enough. RYAN REYNOLDS What drew you to the project? I loved that the director could shoot this horror film and focus on those elements while I could focus on the Did you meet the real George Lutz? It’s not a biography and MGM wasn’t “that excited” about the idea - so no. Is it true you slapped one of the kids for real? He had it coming (laughs)! It was horrible. I didn’t mean to. He thought it was so cool. The script supervisor was crying. I tried to blame it on the dark forces. Perversely, I was kind of excited that something came out so organically and that it was captured on film. Did you make a choice not to talk to the kids off camera? Yeah, I never talked to them. Don’t want to get attached. Don’t want to love them. I need to be able to do my job. Have you seen the original movie? Yeah. And I don’t think it aged well, so I think that it’s perfectly worth a remake, worth retelling with the technology for the legions of fans that support this genre. Are you a fan of horror genre? Not... as.. much.. as.. Id.. like.. to.. say.. in .. this interview. (laughter). No, not a huge, huge fan. I don’t actively seek out these type of roles. ANDREW DOUGLAS How much influence did other horror films have on your film? If 10 is copying, I would say about a 6 or 7. I immersed in many other films to see where this could go. I looked at two films really. I looked at “The Shining” hard. I looked at a lot of Wes Craven’s films, because he’s such a master of the mechanics of suspense, timing. And then I looked at a lot of Japanese, Chinese and Korean films, because I was really interested in ways to find newer scares, especially because there’s so many horror films around right now and I just didn’t want to tap into the same imagery that all horror films end up doing, even if we do slip into that sometimes. I deliberately didn’t re-look at the old film. I remember it pretty well, though. The main thing I remember is that babysitter. What is it about these horror updates from the 70’s Why so many of them? Is it technology? Timing? I don’t know. You have to talk to somebody smarter than me. When you look at those How did you aim to make the house scary? Give it a face. Some people wanted it to be a full -on Victoria house. But I said it must have a face. I remember the poster for the original more than the film itself and on the poster it had eyes and the balcony had teeth.... Was there ever a time you were scared during the filming? Any nightmares? I had nightmares whether or not by the end of the schedule I’d finish the damn story. Those were my nightmares.... But actually, when the child was on the roof, and I got one tremor when we shot the library scene with the door handle. A beautiful catholic seminary outside of Chicago gets turned upside down. For some reason, I don’t believe in God, but for some reason when the cross got turned upside down, I got a chill. Now is that something deeper than the rational mind? Probably the only one. But for the rest of the time, I’m in the same world as the children. I’m playing, and I’m trying to make it as grotesque as I can. How did you keep the child actors from getting scared? have a far greater sense of what’s real and what’s playful than we as adults do. Kids have play time and real time. That’s something we lose as we get older. Any chance of a sequel? Well, we left Jody in the house, so there’s definitely room for it. But I just don’t know how much juice there is for it. Personally. I think we squeezed it pretty dry. Any other 70’s horror film you’d like to do? I’m not sure (laughs). Is it too soon to remake “Shaun of the Dead”? |
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Hello, boils and ghouls. Sorry it’s been so long since our last shocktime together. Life sometimes gets in the way of well made frights. I did have the pleasure of speaking with many of you thanks to a 
interviews with remake stars Ryan Reynolds and Melissa George, along with the film’s producer, Andrew Form, and its director, Andrew Douglas. Gavin was a Production Assistant on DETROIT ROCK CITY and has turned into a full blown filmmaker in his own right. He was kind enough to take over my journalistic duties so I could head to San Francisco for the Fearless Tales Genre Fest, a wonderful film festival run by the tireless Michael Davidson showcasing independent horror films by upcoming and established genre directors. If you missed out, make sure to attend (or submit) next year! 
of ducks who called the canals their home. Hey, if it meant a better life for me as well, I certainly didn’t mind a little AM quacking or a little PM construction... 
noticed on the top stoop the leather camera bag containing Al’s prized Nikon 35 mm. I scooped it up and marched to his still sleeping form. We both had slept on the floor that past night, not having determined the outcome of the “who gets the room with the bathroom” discussion. I roused him, chastising him for leaving such a valued possession outside in plain sight for the world to steal. 
As soon as I got home, I relayed the “good news” to Alan. Since I got the bigger room at the “Oakwoods”, it was only fair he should have the larger one this time around. Needless to say, Alan was quite surprised by my benevolence, but didn’t waste time pondering it as he moved his stuff into the room. 
incoming tenants if previous tenants have made complaints of ‘paranormal’ activity. If they do not, and the incoming tenant learns of such complaints or experiences their own paranormal activity, the incoming tenant has legal grounds to break the lease. Hard to believe, but true. A modern world with cynics and doubt, and yet a legal system that still acknowledges the unknown… 
it’s true. Or was it? Who knows. Many have questioned the story’s validity. But as a thirteen year old in 1977 reading Jay Anson’s bestselling book, there simply was nothing more frightening. And yes, because it was sold as a true story, the tale of the Lutz’s 28 days in Amityville, Long Island was unbearably scary. The movie followed in 1979. It was cheesy, left out some of the best moments of the book, yet it was still fun. That sonorous voice bellowing “GET OUT!” freaked me out then, and 26 years later still does the trick. Cliché though it’s become, it cemented the phenomenon. 
putting it out on DVD in a brand new, all encompassing 
reality. George Lutz was involved with a competing Dimension project so he couldn’t be involved, so we based things off the original Amityville project. Also, Michael Bay is a huge fan of true crime. There’s ho ‘hands off’ with Michael. His name is there, he wants the quality to be there as well. Nothing slips through the cracks. 
similar to the ways in which the audience will. However, in a movie like this, the house is what the story is about. 
psychological profile of George, focus on his unraveling from point A to point B. I just wanted to play that. It was this weird compulsion. Human nature is interesting to me and most filmgoers I think. 
films now, you have to say, why was this such a period for horror? Culturally, we aren’t just led by the nose. It’s not studio heads saying “I reckon we’re ready for like 20 70’s horror films remakes...” I think that what happens is that they can try that, but if the audiences aren’t responsive to it, then it just won’t work. So it could be that there are these cultural bubbles, and right now there is no question that we as a society are just absolutely eating up horror. It was a big creative decision to set in the 70s. It is a little bit anachronistic. We didn’t have girls like the babysitter in the 70’s (laughter) Men didn’t look like Ryan Reynolds back then. So it’s more of a hybrid than anything. But I think the inherited wisdom is that the original film has so much equity, a kind of familiarity that we wanted to tap into, and the idea of it being a true story. We definitely wanted to be able to say “based on a true story” because that has so much leverage in a horror film. And it’s clearly elaborated on, and bent and twisted and speculated.