Taking Shape

by Dustin McNeill

  Almost Halloween colors.

  Yes, that’s the titles! (laughs) Moustapha said, ‘Dominique, what titles do you want?’ And I said, ‘I want a knife that chops. Very fast. Snip, snip, snip.’ And he says, ‘Oh, really? How come? Why?’ ‘We’ll reveal that it’s chopping a pumpkin – but at the beginning, we don’t know.’ It’s just like evil punches in the dark from a brief five-frame silver shiny object. And that mirrors the tension that I wanted to create in the whole movie, but in the title sequence.

  I really wanted to scare the audience. It’s a rollercoaster, right? I wanted the audience to be exhausted by the end of the ride. ‘Ooh! Ah!’ You’ve perspired. Your adrenaline has been pumped up. Your body smells a different smell. And then you can be happy because you went through fears and laughter and joys and fears again. And now the world can be more peaceful. That was the idea. But to really give the audience that fear feeling.

  The early killing of Rachel is perhaps one of the film’s most shocking aspects. Truth be told, many fans have lamented this decision. What lead you to pursue this?

  You know, we were at the cusp of the ‘90s. I felt that Rachel was wonderful. Meat and potatoes. She belonged to the ‘80s. She was the sweet, nice girl. Plain, though. Predictable. And too kind. I wished for the character to lead us through the movie to be more spicy, more unpredictable. To be dark-haired. Not the blonde little princess like America is used to having as their mythical figure. Something a little more acidic… something we are not used to tasting. If we were to compare the two characters to food, Rachel is banana… meat and potatoes. Soft, sweet, kind, mushy food. Tina is acidic. Spicy, crunchy, a mix of salt and sweet.

  Of course, I do understand my audience. It’s disappointing when they see Rachel die so early because she’s the girl we are used to. We love her easily. I wanted to get rid of that. I wanted to shock. I wanted to tell my audience, ‘Here we go. Guys, this is the new Halloween. Beware. Put your belt on because we’re going for a ride.’ Until Rachel’s death, we were very kind with the audience. Very light-colored, apart from the opening of the film. I just wanted to say, ‘Hey, this is going to be something different. Watch out.’ That’s why I wanted Rachel to die. I thought it was absolutely important. Until that point, she was only wonderful. She was smiling. She was the innocent girl, so we’ve got to kill her.

  Like so many, I love Rachel. But I think her early exit works in the context of the story. Though as a substitute, Tina is a most polarizing replacement. Some love her, others loathe her. What were your thoughts on this character and her journey?

  Tina is not so easily lovable. One needs to get used to her – to see her in different situations. To observe, feel, listen to her. That takes a little time. Rachel is an easy one to get because she’s so plain. Tina is more surprising. Unpleasant, really pleasant, charming. We don’t know. By the time the film gives her character to develop, we are really touched by her. She’s the one who is not so innocent. She is wiser. She has already had sex. She is the one who is knowledgeable. She is the one who is freer. I believe that when Tina dies in the hands of Michael, one feels for her and is affectionate towards her. She was so fast at the beginning, we – the audience – had a problem understanding her. We think, ‘Mmm, she’s the bad girl.’ We feel that the bad in her might take over – but no. She’s not bad. She’s just a freer girl and she says she’s free. In the movie, this is probably my feminist side that comes to life – to say, ‘Woman is free. Women have the right to declare themselves.’ I wanted to give power to women. That is the real thing about Tina.

  Actually, this Tina character grew with [actress] Wendy Kaplan. As I met her, I thought, ‘My God. This is a crazy young woman who is ready to give it all. This is a great opportunity for me to watch and learn.’ I’m not a woman. Women are mysterious to me. My love and respect for them makes me a very acute listener. It is by listening to Wendy that I was able to forge the character, make her take life and to give her the freedom the character now has. It was wonderful. She was an aspiring actress and so full of energy and generosity. She was also able to tune down. Often, I was wondering if I was too extroverted with the character – if I was leading her to go too far. But I liked it. I thought I was correct. I thought her spontaneity, her little screams and joyfulness were an asset to the film, unlike other films – unlike the Jamie Lee Curtis character. I went for it. Sometimes, directors have to listen to their hunch.

  You mentioned Donald and Wendy – how was it working alongside the other actors?

  I loved working with Beau Starr. He was so wonderful and generous. Listening, attentive and suggesting things. It really was a joy. And Danielle Harris was a surprise to me. I was not totally convinced of her performance in Halloween 4. Somehow, I said, ‘Okay, yes… Uh, she was there. She did it. She has charisma, doesn’t she?’ I was wondering and trying to feel her out. And actually, she paid attention to this weird, foreign guy. For her, I was an entity from Mars. We played games. We ran like crazy so that she would be out-of-breath to come into her scenes. I would remind of where the character was, her motivations, the intentions of the character. It was a joy. Because she was responding. She was present.

  You know, she had to act very often in front of the camera – meaning not always with a character in front of her. Basically, I didn’t show the Shape a lot when he was close to her. I showed her reacting to the camera. It was a little abstract for a child. I remember in the haunted house, she had to be absolutely scared and run down the corridor knowing that the Shape was coming. I sort of ran with her to make her out-of-breath and said, ‘Go!’ Sometimes, my ‘Go!’ was strong… giving her energy and injecting some kind of force. She used it. She was responsive to it. Tears came out of her eyes. It felt like a little bird in the nest having not flown yet, looking down from atop the tree at the immense precipice that is down below with the branches, saying, ‘Are my wings going to hold or not?’ And silently, the mother says, ‘Go! Get out of the nest! Get out of safety! Throw yourself out! You will see your wings will open. You will make it. Your wings will open before you hit the ground.’ And that’s what Danielle had the courage to do. She jumped out, took the risk, and her wings opened. And that gives me shivers. And quite a few times, she pulled tears out of my eyes. Thank you, Danielle.

  I was so lucky and happy to have met Tamara Glynn in the casting sessions. I couldn’t believe such a human being could be existing on Earth. So fresh, so beautiful, so innocent. A smile to make your heart break. I said, ‘Right! This is my third element!’ in the sense of Rachel, Tina and Samantha. Innocent but daring. Courageous and willing. The girl who is planning her evening and her first time. She performed those scenes extremely well. Matthew [Walker] was a joy, too, I have to say. Unbelievable, I know. I’m only talking positive about my actors but, you know, I tend to love them, listen to them, feel for them so I can direct them. Matthew was the alternative goofball. An innocent guy who is, like, wanting to discover the world and, like a dog, is a mixed breed, bumping into walls and then finding his road. That kind of character. The guy who’s searching for his aim while he’s walking and not knowing where he’s going.

  One of the film’s most memorable sequences might be the Tower Farm car chase. It’s the kind of scene that you might think would be the finale because it’s so intense – yet you still have the sequence at the Myers house.

  I love that car chase in the woods. Just crazy. So hard to make. Don Shanks still bitches about me not cutting the camera early enough. He did the accident. He wanted to do the driving through the pine trees and through the field – and he went at thirty-miles-per-hour into that tree himself. He was driving. He was rigged. Everything was rigged. But it is extremely violent to have a moving object hitting a tree. And I did not say cut immediately. I left ten seconds at least because I needed the real effect of this amazing smoke that was coming out of the lights of the car – and that peace. I wanted to have the character Jamie look at this – look at this – and hang onto it. Because I
knew that to remake this with fake flames and fake smoke would never look as authentically beautiful as it was then. So I left it ten seconds longer after the crash before saying cut. And Don said, ‘Dominique! It was the longest ten seconds of my life!' (laughs)

  The house was so important to me. It was the desire to go into black and gold and to be hard contrast. I wanted to have the suspense. I am not a follower. I am a guide. And I will not follow everything that has been done before me in the series of Halloween. I only saw once the John Carpenter movie. I did not see Halloween II or Halloween III because I was told they were a different genre. I saw Halloween 4 and then I went on. I went on with my imagination. Lots of fans are sort of puzzled that the house of Michael Myers doesn’t look like the house of the original. (laughs) Because I made a choice. I made a choice for Halloween 5. For someone who did not necessarily see the whole series… at the time, we didn’t have such a retrospective look at the beginning of the series and so on.

  We fans tend to obsess.

  Exactly. We were not guided by what the fans were telling you. But today, Malek Akkad is listening only to his fans. I mean, that’s his choice. But at the time, we could create something. So I did not shoot that little house where Michael was born to create Halloween 5. I needed space. I needed a laundry chute. I needed ingredients of that kind. And that laundry chute – that’s another scene where I’ve lengthened the happening from the screenplay to the reality because it was the perfect suspenseful location to scare the audience. We have claustrophobia. We have the falling. We have the verticality. We have the knife transpiercing the chute. ‘Oh my god, this is fantastic!’ And Moustapha saw that and he liked it.

  I explained to him the laundry in the hospital at the beginning. He said, ‘Okay! Shoot it! You have three hours more, Dominique!’ He was really very straight forward in getting things. He was a real companion. He was not on the set, but I would see him every two days. He would come in and say, ‘How are you doing?’ and so on, and he would allow me to go ahead. And then he would put Rick Nathanson to check me with the budget because he had a very strict rule of not overgoing the budget. Moustapha absolutely loved that Rick and I would fight each other. He said, ‘Both want the best. One wants the best for my budget and the other wants the best for the movie. That’s fantastic. They’re going to fight.’ (laughs) Rick had nothing or very little to say about the script. I have to say he became a producer later on. There, he was sort of the line producer. He was line producing. He was just checking his budget.

  What do you remember about producer Ramsey Thomas?

  Oh, wonderful. Wonderful. He was Moustapha Akkad’s brain many times. He was smart. He was understanding of film and storytelling. From the three guys who hated me in that first meeting, he was the first one that turned around and liked me. He was the first one able to turn around and like what I was doing. He was the one who accompanied me. He was also a, ‘Yes, sir,’ to Moustapha Akkad, but he was an intelligent man and he was a very creative man. I liked him a lot. He did one thing and we all sabotaged him. (laughs) Poor Ramsey.

  There were a number of scenes shot for the film that were cut prior to release. I’ve heard it was actually Ramsey Thomas who shot the new opening in place of the Dr. Death scene. Do you recall the specifics of this?

  You know, I got the greenlight to shoot the beginning of the movie. As I told you earlier, my wish was to unsettle the audiences – to go against the rules – to go against the expectations. Michael Myers falls into the trap, escapes by a little grotto and into the river. And there, he is helped – he goes into a house where he meets a hermit. And the hermit is this six-foot-tall guy weighing eighty pounds. Thin like a wire. He was a weird character. He was a fantastic figure who was all into the occult. The whole house was owls, objects, symbols, incredible stuff… he was a magician. Alone, marginal, living in the forest. And he would have Michael there for a year. And All Hallow’s Eve, the night where it all happens – the spirits awaken and so on – he’s doing some kind of magical performance on Michael. Michael rises and kills him in a great way, actually. It was quite a show, if I may so. It was surprising. It was violent. It was short. It was ecstatic. The guy before dying had this ecstatic orgasm. And then he had his sufferance being cut short by the death. I mean, it was an ecstatic death. And Moustapha was thinking, ‘What? Dominique?’ (laughs) ‘Oops!’ He loved it. But you know what, he saw it and mandated Ramsey to shoot an alternative scene on the same set and to change a few shots. All of the shots where the young guy was in, Ramsey shot with an old man and simplified the shots.

  But the team, learning about this, went in and stripped the whole set from its fantastic look because they were so upset that this would happen. And Don Shanks was not in the reshoots. Only the old guy. And I said, ‘Come on, Ramsey, don’t do this to me. Please refuse to do this. You know my feelings excellent.’ But Ramsey is paid by Moustapha so will say yes at the end to Moustapha and he did it. So, we lost our scene, basically, except for the shots on Michael Myers. Those few shots where he twitches his hands. That was from the original shoot.

  What would you attribute to its deletion?

  Moustapha was getting old and was saying, ‘I need the audience to sympathize with the first victim of the Shape. The audience needs to feel sorry and Dominique, your young man, the audience is not going to feel sorry for him because he’s too odd.’ So that’s why he changed it to an old man for the broader audience.

  Do you think the original opening was too supernatural?

  I don’t think so. It was not supernatural. The character had colors of supernatural, but it was very realistic. There was no sort of magician, sorcery, ceremonies more than little touches. It was not supernatural. I’m an Aquarian and I’m ahead of my time in many situations. I’ve seen that in many of my films. They are appreciated, after the fact, because they have some kind of value. But at the time, it was a little too new for Moustapha to accept. But I don’t think it would’ve lowered the box office success. I don’t think the audience would’ve rejected the film because of that scene. I’m quite sure they wouldn’t. I think that if the film, today, would’ve had that scene, it would’ve gained in value.

  There was no demonic aspect to that scene or inside that scene. That young man – that character – was very sympathetic. He had an innocent face. He had a sweet face in a way. He was not an evil, demonic character. He was just healing Michael during the year where his wounds were healing. And he created the ceremony to wake him up that night and that’s when Jamie is in the hospital and there’s the storm and everything else. But there was no demonic aspect to that scene or that character. There was not a long incantation, but it was definitely in awe of this great – I’m not for sure you could tell if the character knew Michael Myers was evil. But he knew he had superpowers because he healed him during the course of a year.

  The new opening – the old man, by Ramsey – was so badly shot. When I saw it, I cried. You should’ve seen how the scene worked together. It was very good. We had some wide shots featuring both Michael and the young guy that were deleted. So, you had pieces of the story that were deleted because Ramsey added close-ups of the old man. We did not use the two-shots.

  The original script had a scene where Sheriff Meeker and Dr. Loomis visit a cemetery to find a coffin missing, the same coffin that appears in the Myers house attic. Was this ever shot?

  No, I don’t think so. I would remember a cemetery scene. It was deleted before shooting it. I did quite a few changes while I was on set. I made the scene with Rachel inside the house longer with the suspense. I doubled the time with Jamie in the hospital – when she is running down the stairs and everything else. Those are the suspense scenes where I thought, ‘I need some time.’ And, you know, there was a mandate. ‘We need to be ninety minutes. No more.’

  We had some extra scenes. There was another scene that we shot of the girls doing cartwheels and speaking sexy stories in the park. That was cut because it was too similar to the sc
ene where Samantha speaks about looking forward to having her first date on Halloween and everything else. So, it did not progress the plot. That’s why we cut it out. But that one we shot.

  Actor Jeffrey Landman has revealed that Billy was intended to be a BMX bike racer. At least one scene was shot featuring Billy and his bike. Do you recall why this character trait did not feature in the final cut?

  It’s true. We dropped the bike. We couldn’t [shoot Jamie and Billy on the BMX at the Tower Farm, as originally planned]. Jeffrey was not gifted at biking and even less with someone on the back of his bike. (laughs) So we went with the running to make it simpler. I think it was impossible to shoot that night and not have to fake everything.

  Another notable deleted sequence has been labeled the “SWAT team massacre” – a scene in which the Shape overcomes several SWAT officers stationed outside the clinic, even twisting one officer’s head around. What can you tell me about that?

  Yes, very short scene. Four or five policemen were killed in different ways. The idea was to increase the stakes. To make him an unstoppable killing machine and now, he’s coming for Jamie. I wanted to have a quick montage of him going through the clinic before he realizes, ‘Ah! She’s not in the clinic. I’m going to go back to the house.’ But at the end, we thought it was more suspenseful to have the radio of the policeman listening to the screams of other agents being killed. We get just one – the window through the car – and it was symbolizing the brutality of the character. Rob Zombie copied that.

  Oh, did he?

  Oh my god. I was told to watch one of the movies of Rob and I recognized my movie about eighty percent of the shots. They were so similar. I said, ‘What the fuck?’ (laughs) I forget. Maybe the first one, maybe the second one, I don’t know. I saw the similarities in the script. He robbed so much in the script - and then in the way he shot it. Unbelievable!