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My Soul To Take

Coverage by Nobuhiro Hosoki

Story : In the sleepy town of Riverton, legend tells of a serial killer who swore he would return to murder the seven children born the night he died. Now, 16 years later, people are disappearing again. Has the psychopath been reincarnated as one of the seven teens, or did he survive the night he was left for dead? Only one of the kids knows the answer.

Q&A with Director Wes Craven, Actor Max Thieriot

 

(Q): Where did this idea come from?
 
(Wes Craven): Max wrote a high school report. No, it came from one of those ideas that comes out of nowhere about a man who was being treated for multiple personality disorder and knew he had five personalities but they were all benign and controllable. So he was living at home with his wife who didn’t know he had this condition, and one night he discovers the weapon that has been shown on tv to be the weapon of a serial killer who has been terrorizing the area where he and his family live.

And he and his other personalities decide they’re going to call a psychiatrist and the evil personality says “If you do that I’ll kill you.” So I’ll just say that night is the night that man appears to die. There’s a fiery ambulance crash by a river and he disappears, and they assume he’s either drowned or whatever. And the same night – now, this man had seven personalities – the same night, in a bizarre coincidence, seven children are born in the local town hospital, and this is a very tiny town.

And Max plays one of the characters that is born that night. And the body of movie takes place 16 years later and there is a sort of mythology that’s going up in the town that this man has either survived the crash and is going to come back and get them physically, or he has transmuted the souls of himself and his seven personalities into the seven kids. If that’s the case one of the kids has the killer personality or the killer’s soul. So that’s the premise and it all takes place in one day, on their 16th birthday, and it’s kind of the day of reckoning.
 
(Q): Coincidentally, you had not actually written a screenplay and actually developed your own film from your own script in 16 years, right?
 
(Wes Craven): Pretty much. I had written a remake of a Japanese film called “Pulse,” but the studio pulled the plug on it for their own reasons about a week before we were going to shoot. I kind of diverted everything off into “Cursed,” which I spent the next two and half miserable years on. So I wrote that, and that was almost a year’s work out the window, and then I also co-wrote with my son the second of the remakes of “Hills Have Eyes,” and I wrote and directed a five minute segment of “Paris, je t’aime,” which came out about two or three years ago.

So I had done some things, but the big one, “Pulse,” had disappeared, and I had been spending almost three years doing remakes of my first two films, of which we have ownership after 30 years. So we decided to do that. And then at a certain point I said “You know what, you’ve got to get back and start writing. That’s who you really are.” And so I did.
 
(Q): Max, when did the project come to you? How did you get involved with it?
 
(Max Thieriot): I think the project came to me around April, March, some time around there. It was pretty last minute, kind of came up out of nowhere. I was familiar with the script and everything. It all happened kind of last minute. I got a phone call basically telling me to fly out to New York to come meet Wes and Iya, and I did, and the next day I think I was in Connecticut off to work.
 
(Q): You’re going to New York to meet Wes Craven to be in a Wes Craven movie. What’s that like?
 
(Max Thieriot): It’s intimidating. I honestly didn’t know what to expect. I’d seen a lot of Wes’ films. Just the name Wes Craven, it was so mysterious. It’s like meeting the Wizard of Oz the first time. So it was a little intimidating, I didn’t know what to expect, but I was really excited. I was a huge fan of his films so it was pretty exciting for me.
 
(Q): Wes, you generally work with ensembles historically. I don’t know if that’s a byproduct of the genre itself or if that’s something you actually prefer to do. What is your approach to that? Do you prefer to work with ensembles?
 
(Wes Craven): I like doing films about families so that kind of involves a group of people, and I also like doing it about a group of friends. And you have to a certain amount of people to kill off. And I’ve kind of developed this theory that in a horror film in a sense you’re kind of dealing with sort of an uber personality. Sort of a composite personality that is made up of hero or heroine and all of his or her friends, and they kind of are all aspects of an overall personality, and the parts of the personality that don’t work when faced with grim reality are killed off.

And so it’s kind of in a strange way a parallel with our own lives, where the parts of ourselves that, at a certain point in your life you say “That really is stupid and I’m getting rid of it,” is the equivalent of a character in a horror film dying; that’s how I look at it. So at the end you end up with a person that’s really in a way sort of honed by fate and fear and necessity to perform at the heroic level. With this film I really kind of consciously did that, so Max’s character starts off as a total innocent in this town where there’s a series of terrible secrets, and within his own family there’s a stunning secret that he knows nothing about.

And everybody has spared him and thus made him kind of in a way very weakened because he doesn’t know the real facts of things. And over the course of the movie he learns the facts in all sorts of ways, including when some of his friends are killed he mysteriously gets their intelligences or powers or traits in a way that makes him stronger. So he in the course of 24 hours goes from a total innocent kid that some people think is mildly mentally challenged to a kick ass hero. So it’s kind of a fun journey and very difficult one I will say, for an actor, and Max pulled it off terrifically. So I think students of cinema will be interested in watching this performance because he really knocked it out of the park.
 
(Q): Can you elaborate a little bit on that Max? Just approaching this character and those dynamics that Wes was just talking about?
 
(Max Thieriot): It’s tough. You read something like that and obviously as an actor you’re always trying to challenge yourself and do things that scare you. It was definitely a little scary at first but Wes and I talked about it a lot and we really kind of worked it out and worked through it. I would watch the other actors and listen to them talk and kind of just see how they were, and then just looked up a lot of stuff online, watched videos and all sorts of stuff.
 
(Q): What do you mean looked up stuff online? What?
 
(Max Thieriot): I can’t really elaborate on all the videos and stuff.
 
(Wes Craven): Multiple personalities. There is a character in the beginning of the film who, it turns out to be the killer, has these seven personalities. So we all had to study that phenomenon of multiple personality syndrome, and then how it would work within a dramatic framework of a character who was seven people basically. And then when those seven people gets split into seven separate people when the souls go into these kids born that night, each of those kids represents in a way a strong portion of those characteristics and personas that were in that man.
 

(Wes Craven): The Ripper just seemed to have a nice ring to it.
 
(Q): Horror has changed; the genre has changed so much since you started out. It’s gorier, it’s more sadistic. Is it harder now to scare audiences?
 
(Wes Craven): I don’t think so. I think in some ways the gore and the sadism isn’t scary so much as something just to be endured. I haven’t made one of those films like “Saw” and “Hostel” and things like that, so I’m not a big expert. Although my first one was pretty horrendous, so it’s not like I’m innocent of all that. But I think those films are more of about just a horrible experience of watching people being tortured and sawed in half and things like that. This film really has, there’s a lot of humor and there’s a lot of very human drama to this.

There are scares and there are jumps, but there’s a great deal to it. There’s kind of a puzzle to it all, you have to figure out what has happened in the past and what Bug’s real story is. By the way, his name is Adam but everybody calls him Bug. The reason is the night he was born the paramedics thought he was cute as a bug so that name sort of stuck with him. And the reason for it in the script was that I was trying to get this idea of this cosmic view of god looking down on us and we just look like little bugs to him. Or the grimmest look of life is that we’re so insignificant in the cosmic view that we’re like little bugs, but at the same time it’s kind of touching.
 
(Q): Max, as a younger movie-goer, as someone who is now part of the genre, what do you think of horror cinema as it is now and where it’s going? What’s your sense of it as a movie-goer?
 
(Max Thieriot): Honestly, I’m not a huge fan of the blood and guts torture horror that it’s kind of become. For me I like to watch a film that has a real story underlying it all. I just don’t really enjoy watching those movies. The first “Saw” I was entertained and then after that I kind of got over it. So I think “My Soul to Take” is fresh and it kind of has some of the old school kind of slasher style stuff in it, but it really has a story underneath it all and there is blood in the movie if that’s what you like. Kind of a little bit of everything. I don’t know; it’s interesting. I think all film in general is kind of changing.
 
(Wes Craven) : You could kind of warp the space of the room without the audience being aware, but in a way that was dramatically really quite powerful. So that’s what we did; sort of a stealth 3D. And the feeling was, and by the way, the research we went through kind of showed that 3D is coming whether you like it or not. It’s coming down the pike big time. I think there’s something like 8,000 theaters that are going to have it by the end of the year. We’re showing in 70% of the theaters are going to be in 3D, and it’s just going to be more and more and more.

So whether you like it or not it’s going to be a big part. It’s like when CDs took over for LPs. So my sense was if you want to get the film out there the process seems to lend itself to purely dramatic use without being silly about it. And then people have a choice; they can see it in 2D also. But somebody said to me in the course of going through all of this it’s like the borderline between talkies and silent films. Some people were able to make that transition and some people were either unwilling or unable to, and I don’t want to be standing on the dock when the boat sails.

It’s an experiment for me. I can tell you that we’re all very happy with it; it looks really terrific. I’m not a big fan of having to wear glasses but there are dimensions to making a film 3D that allow you to do things you couldn’t otherwise. James Cameron obviously has taken us there in a big way. You have a choice to see it in one way or the other but in 3D it has very interesting things about it that it couldn’t have it 2D.
 
(Q): Do you want to make a 3D film then? Having gone through the conversion process, do you want to originate one in 3D?
 
(Wes Craven): No. I wouldn’t particularly like to shoot one; it’s a totally different process. If you shoot in 3D they’re very special cameras, they’re rather heavy, rather clunky. You don’t have many options in post-production at all. So I no, I wouldn’t want to go out and shoot a 3D movie. I like the fact that it can be shown in 2D perfectly well but also can be developed into 3D. And very frankly, we’re going to see how it plays.

I think it’s going to get a much wider distribution than it would have if I had said no, and I also think that it’s very, very interesting and beautiful in 3D, which I thought it wouldn’t be but it is. We’re giving it a try and I think by and large the people that have seen it said it was really cool.
 
(Q): This is a question for Wes. Will we ever see a sequel to “Shocker”?
 
(Wes Craven): Anything’s possible in the future. We might travel to Mars; who knows. Right now I feel like I’m very much into directing again and writing and directing again, so it’s not a top priority. So that’s where I’ll leave it.
 
(Q): Perhaps a remake?
 
(Wes Craven): I just kind of feel like I’ve had it with remakes for a while. I did two “Hills” and “Last House” and it took me out of directing, frankly, in order to make all that happen. I’d rather be directing or directing and writing.
 
(Q): Do you see yourself finding books and making them into movies, or finding true life stories and making them into movies?
 
(Wes Craven): Well you never know where the story’s going to come from next, frankly. This one just popped into my mind. Some films, like “Nightmare on Elm Street” came from a newspaper article about a kid who had nightmares and told his parents he was afraid if he fell asleep again he’d be dead, and the parents said “You must rest, you must sleep,” and the kid kept himself awake for a long time.

Four days, five days or something like that, and finally fell asleep, and that night his parents heard him screaming and ran into the bedroom and by the time they got to him he was dead. That was an actual story in the “Santa Monica Evening Outlook” and I read it and said “My god. There’s a film there.” “Hills Have Eyes” came out of a historic book called “Murder and Mayhem in England.” It was about a family in the 1600s in Scotland. So stories can come from all sorts of places. I kind of have a fertile mind but I never know where it’s coming from next.

I’m sure it’s possible that I’ll read a book some day and say oh that would be terrific. “Music of the Heart,” to go out of genre, the Meryl Streep film I did was based on a documentary about an actual school teacher. So it’s kind of whatever triggers that thing that’s somewhere in your mind that is your creative place, which I don’t understand at all.
 
(Q): How do you create such memorable characters?
 
(Wes Craven): I’m very good. No, it helps to have a great script. In the case of “Nightmare,” obviously I wrote that myself, in the case of “Scream” Kevin Williamson. I think it’s thinking of them as not just stock characters, like the girls who are going to run through the woods and fall and take her shirt of or whatever and the guys who want to get drunk and get laid or whatever, and really think about them as people. That’s been my secret, is just to really respect the characters and make them a lot more like us rather than the clichés up on a lot of screens. And really have sort of a matrix to the film, if you will, that means something more than just what’s on the surface.
 
(Q): It’s been about a decade between “Scream 3” and “Scream 4,” and so I’m just wondering if you could comment a little bit about that big of a gap and what it’s like to get back behind the camera working with the “Scream” franchise again.
 
(Wes Craven): I think all of us that did it felt like the original trilogy was a thing that was thought out early on by Kevin Williamson, and after it was over none of us wanted to just crank out another thing that would look like a sequel. But there was also a feeling after 10 years that we were almost in a new epoch of horror and it was time to comment on the last 10 years. So that was kind of I think the reason why we all felt interested in it, and Kevin came up with a really fascinating concept that intrigued us all. And it was a lot of fun to go back and work with Courtney and Neve and David. Their all wonderful people and Courtney and David are absolutely crazy and unpredictable. So it was a lot of fun.
 
(Q): What would you say would be the benchmark of your uniqueness of horror films?
 
(Wes Craven): I think the important thing is I have two questions I always ask myself when I have an idea. One is have I seen this before? And this is something I tell film students and people who are writing film scripts is ask yourself is there something else out there like this? Because so many kids will show me a script and say “This is kind of like ‘Friday the 13th’ meets ‘Saw.’” And I kind of want to tell them right away you should be bothering about it because it’s already been done.

So I don’t like to do that. And then I ask myself is this something that you could go out of your way to go see? And with the films that I’ve done that have been very successful it’s like yeah. When I thought of the idea for “Nightmare on Elm Street” I honestly can say I’d never seen a film like that. And the same with “Scream” and the same with “My Soul to Take,” and I could honestly say that I would drive across town to go see it. That’s a factor of will people talk about the movie the next day at work or at school, and if they do talk about it at work or school it’s probably because they’ve never seen anything like it. That’s the key to saying fresh and being true to your work, which is to come out with original stuff.
 
(Q): Is there any possible consideration for future animated films in the horror genre by you?
 
(Wes Craven): Anything’s possible. I don’t know how to animate, so… I hadn’t thought of it, but there’s no reason why a good animated film couldn’t be made. Tarantino a couple of times has inserted animation into his films, like “Kill Bill” and so forth, so it’s totally possible.
 
(Q): I have a question for Max. When did you first start your acting career?
 
(Max Thieriot): I first started my acting career when I was 13. It all happened kind of really fast for me, which luckily for me I think that’s the reason I’m still doing it. It’s tough, especially in the beginning, and I don’t know if I would have kept with it if I didn’t get lucky and get a movie right off the bat. But I started when I was 13 and it was “Catch That Kid.”

(Wes Craven): I’d seen Max in “The Astronaut Farmer,” where he played the son, and I thought his performance in that was really striking. It was also in “Jumper,” playing the young Hayden Christensen character.
 
(Max Thieriot): “Chloe,” recently. Atom Egoyan’s film with Liam Neeson and Julianne Moore.
 
(Wes Craven): Why don’t you tell us what you’ve done since “My Soul to Take”?
 
(Max Thieriot): I filmed “Chloe” and then that came out, and I just finished a film called “House at the End of the Street,” with Elisabeth Shue and Jennifer Lawrence. I know Wes just finished saying how he doesn’t like to compare movies to other movies, but to give you an idea without giving too much away it’s a thriller that’s kind of like a mix between “Disturbia” and “Psycho,” with this underlying story of almost “American Beauty.” It’s interesting. So I’m pretty excited about that. And next I’m filming a movie called “Yellow,” which is Nick Cassavetes’ new film, and that has Ben Foster and Sienna Miller, David Morse; there are a bunch of people in that.
 
(Q): What characteristics were you looking for when you were casting for the lead role?
 
(Wes Craven): It’s kind of an interesting story. We had cast two other actors for his role and the role of his best friend, and both had to drop out at the last second, literally the week before we were to shoot. Iya and I and Carly were in a total panic and our casting agent in New York, Avy Kaufman called and said “I’ll get some kids in the room and there are a couple actors that I think you should meet.” We went down and we met Max and John Magaro, who plays his best friend. Max is a very interesting guy. He lives out in Northern California, he hunts wild boors and all sorts of animals, he wanted to be a race car driver; he’s not somebody that you would think in some ways would be an actor who could go really deep.

But this guy has an amazing instinct for acting and people are recognizing his talent, and as you can hear, he’s increasingly working with very interesting projects and actors. I think we just sensed it and we hoped we were right because we went to New York over the weekend and virtually cast them and then we pushed our start by a week in which time we were able to rehearse and talk about the character. It’s such a difficult character for somebody to pull off, and Max has this interior taste that’s really interesting.

He just knows how to play something without going over the top and he has tremendous depth that is just really interesting to watch on screen. You’ll be amazed by where he starts and where he ends up in this film. We all think we were very lucky to find Max. He’s a fine young actor and I think he’s going to continue on to be a very important American actor.
 
(Q): Max, you’ve been in a variety of films. What direction were you interesting in movie toward in the future? Is there a specific genre that you favor most as an actor?
 
(Max Thieriot): I don’t think there’s one genre that I prefer more than another. I’d like to get into some more action stuff; I kind of like the physical stuff. I always like dramas. And then again, I’ve never done a real comedy, so maybe that, that way I can kind of complete the full spectrum. But yeah I’d say probably action and drama.

End.