A Strange Idea of Entertainment: Conversations with Tom McLoughlin

by Tom McLoughlin

  You also had some new ideas for the Jason character…how he should move…

  I was recently interviewed about it, and someone said, “Your Jason seemed to be much more communicative.” I said, “That’s because I was dealing with a mime character.” When he sees the motor home bouncing up and down because a couple are having sex in there, Jason just stands there and stares, with his head tilting back and forth — like a dog trying to figure out what’s going on. It got a big laugh. I wasn’t making fun of Jason…I just figured he would be processing what was going on in that motor home. Whenever I find a way to put my mime training to use in storytelling, I do it.

  You’ve talked about this being one of the better moviemaking experiences you’ve had…

  To this day, whenever somebody asks what film I had the most fun making, I say Friday the 13th. It was six weeks of night shooting.

  We shot six days a week, and then on Sunday night we’d go to a club in Atlanta and dance all night. Then get up on Monday morning and continue with the show. It was so much fun. I was amazed that the finished film was actually perceived the way I wanted it to be perceived — as a satire on a slasher movie that also worked as a slasher movie. Frank told me, “Just don’t make fun of Jason. We need to keep Jason scary.” So we did that, but I also got the laughs I wanted in there.

  I set up a lot of visual gags — like when my wife Nancy is killed by Jason. She tries to bribe him, offering him her wallet to keep him from killing her. She’s got money and a credit card in her wallet, and when Jason kills her in this giant mud puddle, the money sinks and the American Express card floats. I held on that shot for a few extra beats because I knew there would always be some joker in the theater that would yell, “Don’t leave home without it!” And someone always did. I’ve done that sort of thing a few different times before. In One Dark Night, I named a character Kitty so that when her friend Carol loses her in the mausoleum, she calls out “Kitty?” Some joker in the audience would always meow. Everybody else would laugh, and then a jump scare that came right after that — just as soon as they let down their defenses. I tried to design these movies for the theater audience involvement.

  Why was it so important to you to add humor to the slasher movie formula?

  I didn’t want the film to feel like I was being passionate about the senseless butchering of human beings, and particularly girls. I was just interested in scaring people. I have never believed that gore is a true scare. I wanted to do what Hitchcock did in Dial M for Murder. Before the woman gets choked, the audience sees that it’s about to happen and thinks, Oh shit, I don’t want to see this happen to her. I tried to build up the characters so that hopefully the audience is rooting for them…because they had a sense of humor about life and were not worried about death.

  There’s a scene where the character Paula tucks a little girl into bed and, as she’s walking away, we see Jason through the window and he’s following her, almost like her shadow. So as soon as she steps outside, you’re expecting her to get killed. She hears something, goes around the corner, and you’re expecting it to happen…but it doesn’t happen. I just kept milking that, because to me that’s where the emotion was. Eventually she goes back inside her cabin. Then the wind blows the door open, she goes and sees Jason standing there. The door blows shut again and that’s the end of the sequence. You don’t see the kill because by that point there’s nothing I can do that’s going to be better than the buildup. I just figured I’d take away the kill and let the audience imagine how horrible it will be. That was absolutely a conscious choice. Did it work for the fans? Some yes, some no. I think if you wanted to see her sliced and diced…Well, that’s someone else’s Friday.

  I heard that you paced the entire movie for that kind of slow build and then had to add some kills at the producer’s request.

  Because I’d seen audiences get restless in the first half of One Dark Night, I wanted to hit the ground running with Friday the 13th. The movie opens on a foggy night with a truck roaring around the corner. The first thing you see is this dog eating road kill, with that [lip smacking] sound — so that the audience goes uggh. Then here comes Tommy with his agenda: I’m going to make sure Jason is truly dead. And then thunder, lightning, maggots on Jason’s face. He climbs out of the grave and now he is unstoppable. The scene where he punches out Ron Palillo’s heart was my way of giving the fans something they came to see right at the top. That also made it clear that Jason is now a supercharged monster, and there’s stuff he can do that a human couldn’t do.

  That was a new idea in the Friday the 13th series. You transformed Jason from a serial killer into a zombie. I suppose that’s why you ended the film the way you did, with Jason chained to a rock at the bottom of the lake…Because he isn’t killable. When the hero puts Jason back at the bottom of the lake, that’s the best he can do.

  Having watched all the previous movies, I knew I had to do something different. Of course I’m also dealing with a franchise, so there are set expectations. Few rules, but a lot of expectations. The basic idea was to first create an environment that is somewhat removed from the rest of the world — a place where no one can hear you scream. You’re out in the middle of nowhere and you’re facing an unstoppable killer who, no matter what you do, keeps coming after you. That’s what Michael Myers was, and that’s what Jason became after a few films. Frank Mancuso wanted to do another one of these.

  So I needed to figure out a way to bring Jason back. I did not want to say that it was somebody else dressed up like Jason, which is what the previous film did. In the earlier films, it seemed like Jason was unstoppable — because he was so angry. Then [in Part 5] we’ve got some guy who’s pissed off because his kid got killed…and he didn’t last very long, because it didn’t make sense to give him super-human powers. I knew that we had to somehow go back to the real Jason, and we needed to keep the hockey mask because that was iconic. I didn’t think Jason would have been buried with the hockey mask, so I came up with this ritualistic scenario in which Tommy brings the mask with him so that he can burn the mask and the body and be done with Jason.

  You made the decision to stick with Tommy — the only character who appears as the lead in more than one Friday the 13th movie…

  And we tried to get John Shepherd, who had played the part in the previous film. I thought he did a good job, but he turned it down. So first we had to find somebody for the role of Tommy, and Thom Matthews was the best choice. He had done another horror movie [Return of the Living Dead], so I knew he would bring a bit of genre knowledge to it. Then we needed a beautiful blonde because that was a mandate from Frank Mancuso. I wanted to find one who could act — and Jennifer Cooke was great. She had just done the miniseries V and she had quite a bit of experience. I thought she was terrific in the movie — she had the spunky 1940s Barbara Stanwyck / Jean Arthur quality that I wanted in there. (Even in a horror movie, my Capra influences were a big part of the foundation.)

  Tom Fridley played one of the sidekicks. I thought he was great. Renee Jones — a beautiful actress who’s now doing Days of Our Lives. I wrote a part specifically for my wife Nancy, who plays one of the camp counselors. I tried to set up the scene so that you think she might be one of the main characters, and then are surprised when she’s snuffed out. Like Janet Leigh in Psycho. I was also fortunate to get Tony Goldwyn at the beginning of his career, before he did Ghost. David Kagen, who plays Sheriff Gariss, was another great find. And Vinnie Guastaferro, who plays the sidekick Rick. He was an actor that I’d worked with in a play called “Bullpen.” I’ve done three or four things with Vinnie, and he is a pure Chicago character actor. You put Vinnie in something and he just brings himself to the role. Basically I hired people that I knew, people who auditioned incredibly well and who understood my sensibility with the comedy — the dryness and the sarcastic edge of the humor.

  Horror fans acknowledge you as the filmmaker who resurrected Jason, literally and figuratively. Your film was successful enough
to allow the series to continue…Are you proud of that?

  On Wikipedia, I’m listed as “an American writer/director most known for my Friday the 13th film, because of its infusion of humor into the series.” That’s my whole identity in the wonderful world of Wikipedia: I made a humorous Friday the 13th movie. That’s hard for me, because I’ve had an eclectic career…I was really confident about my next movie, Date with an Angel, because of my dedication to Capra. And then when that movie got crucified by the critics, I thought, Am I that far off base? It was crushing, because at the time I didn’t want to be known only as a horror director. I wanted to make movies that were more uplifting.

  Eventually I started to do a lot of dark material again on television, but with a sense of humanism and hope that helps the characters to survive the conflict and go on. My own sense of the balance became a little clearer. I didn’t want to do nihilistic horror. I wanted to create modern fairy tales that were grounded in reality.

  How did you end up making Date with an Angel?

  It was my main passion project for many years, but no one wanted to put a fantasy creature in a real life movie. That was before E.T. Then once E.T. broke out, all anyone wanted was cute alien fantasies.

  There was a period where Anson Williams really wanted to produce it. I was going to pitch meetings with Potsie from Happy Days! I’d just stand there while he’d say, “This guy wrote the best script.” As an actor, he’d pitch the thing for me. Then one day, he said, “I was talking to Ron Howard and he just acquired this thing called Splash. It’s a mermaid story…It’s got some similar elements…But we’re going to get there first.” I was already nervous because Warren Beatty was doing a remake of a mermaid movie [Mr. Peabody and the Mermaid]. I knew we had to get there fast. And obviously we didn’t. Anson eventually went on to some other project; Ron made Splash; the Beatty movie got cancelled — I think, because of Splash. Then Mannequin and a bunch of similar films with female fantasy characters came along.

  After my Friday the 13th was well-received, Dino DeLaurentiis came into my life and said, “Tom, what do you want to do?” And I said Date with an Angel. He said, “Fine, you do angel movie.” And just like that, I got to do the angel movie. But by that point Splash had come and gone; Mannequin had come and gone; Weird Science had come and gone; and the critics were like, “Here comes another one. Oh my god, there’s so much fucking sugar in this thing, one of my teeth is starting to ache.” It was even called “Capra-corn.” But I took no offense at that.

  And yet…just yesterday, I met this agent. She’s maybe thirty. The first thing she said to me was, “You have no idea how much I love Date with an Angel.” And I laughed and said, “Thank you, that’s very sweet.” And she said, “No, I’m serious. I watched that movie so many times I wore the tape out. I was so happy when it came out on DVD.” And she was genuine. A similar thing happened about a month ago. I went to the Magic Castle and when one of the magicians there was introduced to me, he said, “Are you the guy who did Date with an Angel?” I said yeah and he goes, “Can you talk to my mother? I know this sounds really weird, but after my father passed away, she made us watch Date with an Angel every holiday. This was her movie.” So I got on his phone at the Magic Castle with his mom in Florida. She was incredible, going on and on and on about the movie. I thought to myself: Maybe this is why I made this movie — for these wonderful people that it deeply touched.

  I always wonder why some people were so affected by that movie, and the others were just like “Oh please…” It was so painful to read the initial reviews. You’d think I was doing something sick and twisted, rather than just trying to tell a story that I thought would be heartfelt and sweet. I can understand how critics watch violent movies and say, “Why do we need this on this planet? Don’t we have enough violence?” But when you’re just trying to make a valentine…I just wanted to create something gentle, fun and romantic. I was shocked by the fact that certain reviewers were so cynical about it.

  Maybe cynics feel just as insulted by the sugar-coated valentine as the moralists do by excessive violence…

  I guess. Or maybe Date with an Angel just wasn’t smart enough or slick enough. Or it simply arrived too late to be considered original.

  You’ve said that the finished film isn’t quite what you intended. What went wrong?

  When I finished Date with an Angel, we did nine test screenings. Nine! Every time, it was tested for a different demographic. Joe Farrell was the guy who used to run those things. I don’t know if people understood how much he controlled this industry at the time. The average person doesn’t know his name, but he and his organization NRG [National Research Group] became incredibly powerful in terms of shaping movies before their release. He would hold these screenings and generate printouts for test audiences to write their comments on. Then he would sit in a room with the producers and say, “Here’s what you need to do with your movie.” And all of us insecure bastards would say, “Okay.”

  Do people hold test screenings a lot of times just to avoid responsibility for a film’s success or failure?

  That’s a smart observation. Yes. Anything to avoid responsibility. Find a way to have somebody else make the statement about what works or doesn’t work…Because most things do fail and you don’t want to be the guy that was behind the failure. It takes a lot of guts to put yourself out there and say, “If it goes down, it’s my ass.” You’ve got to have a maverick sensibility and not worry about what your next job is going to be.

  Do you think Date with an Angel suffers in tone as a result of all the screenings?

  Definitely.

  Do you still feel like it’s your movie?

  Yes. Absolutely. For better or worse, it’s my cinematic baby. It was such a labor of love for me, because it’s so autobiographical. I wrote the story around the three guys I had a band with — George, Don and Rex. The Jim character was basically me. He’s a guy wants to do something creative with his life instead of something practical. What he really wants is to make music, but he’s on the wrong track. He’s getting ready to marry the wrong woman and go to work for her father, and he’s rationalizing about the life that he’s creating for himself. I felt very strongly about those conflicts.

  What really drove me on was the basic idea of searching for some kind of meaning in life. The main character had a terminal disease that he was totally oblivious to. All he knew was that he was having headaches. I used to get constant headaches when I was a kid. When I started getting them again as an adult, I began paying attention to stories about people who have brain tumors and don’t know it and suddenly one day they pass out and go to the hospital and the doctor says, “You have a tumor the size of a softball. There’s no way to operate on it. It’s over.” In a situation like that, you have to hope there’s a master plan, and that your death is part of some bigger scheme. You have to believe that. That’s what the movie was about.

  When I started making the movie, Dino was really eager because he saw Date with an Angel as another Splash, another Mannequin, another Weird Science. He liked the idea because commercially it had already worked, so “let’s do our version of that.” He had a strong desire to play up the comedy as much as possible, which wasn’t my intention. My first cut of Date with an Angel was two and a half hours. It was cut down to ninety minutes, so you can see how much material was lost.

  I fought desperately to hold onto the original romantic theme song. Randy Kerber, who was one of the pianists for the L.A. Mime Company, composed this wonderful theme for when the angel first appears and Jim finds her in the pool. We reprised it when she takes him to heaven. When I was flying around the world, looking for an actress to play the angel, I listened to that theme over and over and my heart soared every time I listened to it. I did not want contemporary rock music in the film. But that happened because Dino’s wife Martha was friends with Frank Mancuso’s wife Becky. Becky was the person that you went to if you wanted to spot your movie with hit pop songs. I had pl
anned to rely exclusively on the Randy Kerber score, but suddenly we were using Steve Winwood and The Cars. Not that I don’t love their music…but it changed the tone of the movie.

  In the end, Date with an Angel suffered as a result of too many previews and too many chefs in the kitchen. We lost more and more of the romantic moments that were my reason for making the movie. The cutdowns were scenes like when Jim can’t find the angel and he wanders into the forest and sees her communicating. From a Biblical standpoint, it looked like she was communicating with God. From a sci-fi standpoint, it could be anything. I wanted it to convey that sense of awe, that she is a creature that belongs somewhere else. I also thought it was highly romantic that they had run away to live in a tree house in the forest. All those romantic fantasy elements were the things that drove me to make the movie.

  You were mentored by Capra, who was one of the leading proponents of the auteur theory — “one man, one film” — so I assume you must have fought pretty hard for your personal vision…

  I remember one specific instance…I was working with an incredible visual effects team led by Richard Edlund. He’d done Star Wars and so many other incredible films. He did the angel concept. Whenever I’d see the flying sequence, I’d say, “You’ve got to do it again.” He’d say, “Dino’s not gonna pay for it.” “Well then I’ll talk to Dino. But it doesn’t look right yet.” You have to remember that I was a guy whose last credit was a Friday the 13th movie, so they had to be asking themselves, “Do we listen to this guy or do we listen to Dino, who might hire us again?” But they were very good at giving me what I wanted, and I was really determined not to cave in. I kept pushing until finally someone broke the door down and said, “That’s it.” But at least I got closer to what I really wanted.