After making a hit in the Marvel movie “Doctor Strange” in 2016, director Scott Derrickson began working on its sequel, “Crazy Multiverse Doctor Strange.” But in January 2020, he suddenly left the film because of a creative difference.
In the next film, I started with Joe Hill’s short story and layered autobiographical material. “I’ve been treated for a couple of years and have been working on many childhood trauma issues,” 55-year-old Delixon said in a video interview.
Result is “Black Phone” On Friday, Derrickson and Ethan Hawke reunited 10 years after their collaboration in the horror horror movie “Sinister.” Hawk is now playing Grabber, a masked psychopath who kidnaps and kills children in Colorado in 1978. That is, he gets unexpected help from Glover’s previous victims until he turns to the witty 13-year-old Finney (Mason Thames)-their ghosts survive via abandoned landlines. Communicate the task for-and his sister, Gwen (Madeleine Maglow).
Given how personal the film is to Derrickson, it’s surprising to hear him start with his story when asked to list the five impacts on The Black Phone. Not. These are edited excerpts from the conversation.
His childhood
“The Black Phone” is set in North Denver, where Derrickson grew up. “It’s a working-class, blue-collar neighborhood, half Mexican and half white,” he said. “There was a lot of violence. Everyone was whipped by their parents and there was a fight at school on their way to school and on their way home.”
In the movie, Finney is always on the edge. His dad is temperamental when drunk and has all these mysterious disappearances. “I think I was eight or nine when my friend next door knocked on the door,” Delixon said. “He was crying and said,’Someone killed my mom.’ His mother was kidnapped, raped, killed, and wrapped in a phone line — I remember the details — And he was thrown into a local lake, “he continued. “So the serial killer who was able to catch you out of nowhere was real to us in the neighborhood. It was always in the air.”
“Adults do not know” (1959)
François Truffaut’s debut Through the alter ego of the film by 14-year-old Jean-Pierre Leo, he looks back on much of his upbringing in a warm and emotionless way. “My first thought was to take a lot of traumatic events as a kid and try to make a kind of American” 400 blow “,” Delixon said. “This is an adult film about kids that I can’t miss. It’s a very interesting way to approach my childhood experience as a filmmaker.”
Still, Delixon was keen to show that it was difficult to sniff out the indomitable spirit. “It’s a really nice picture and it’s somehow dark, but it also shows the resilience of the kids,” he said. “There’s a lot of joy in the movie. This kid keeps hitting, but his spirit is very strong, and I think it’s seen in both Finney and Gwen.”
“The Devil’s Backbone” (2001)
Derrickson is a big fan of Guillermo del Toro’s supernatural horror movie, Set in a 1939 Spanish orphanage, he initially introduced not only the collaborative relationships of orphans, but also how to visually represent ghost children. “From a storytelling perspective, it was a really influential movie for me,” Delixon said.
But he also picked up hints from the Mexican filmmaker’s commentary recorded for the DVD release of the film. “One of Guillermo del Toro’s commentary is that when he plays a child actor, he makes sure that the child can imitate him. This was very helpful to me.” Said Delixon. “If you’re giving them instructions and that doesn’t work, you can do it for them and you need to get them to redo it for you in exactly the same way.”
“Rosemary’s Baby” (1968)
Derrickson praised Roman Polanski’s classic Shocker and began to suspect that a pregnant woman (Mia Farrow) might be surrounded by Satan’s worshipers.In particular, he focuses on the scene we are looking at Rosemary calls the therapist from the phone booth..
“I remember seeing the scene and immediately being hit by a distorted phone filter in the psychiatrist’s voice. Her voice had the same filter,” he said. “I was very impressed with how powerful and strange it felt. It had a different world and somehow felt scary to me.”
Derrickson started by applying a similar filter to Finney’s voice while talking to Grabber’s victim on a black phone. But in post-production, he changed that approach slightly so that the filter would be applied when dead children appeared. “It creates a true tactile sensation that gives you an airy presence and a presence at the same time,” Delixon said. “And that was all the result of thinking about the phone filter in” Baby Rosemary “in that one shot. “
“Prayer to Owen Meenie”
On the surface, “The Black Phone” has little to do with John Irving’s 1989 novel. In this novel, the title character is convinced that he has a connection with God, and his life is built for a pre-determined event. But it influenced Delixon when he and co-writer C. Robert Cargill were trying to figure out what to do with the characters he added to his original short story. “The big expansion was Gwen, and we added four other kids based on the kids we knew in junior high school,” Delixon said.
But then he was confused: how would those children fit in with the plot? “When I thought about’Prayer to Owen Meeny’, I thought,’Oh, that’s it. They’re giving Finney’s mission,'” Delixon said. “And when I did that, I felt,’OK, I know how this movie works. I know how the structure works.” “
